Related papers: Photometry's bright future: Detecting Solar System…

We used the 8 June 2004 transit of Venus (ToV) as a surrogate to test observing methods, strategies and techniques that are being contemplated for future space missions to detect and characterize extrasolar terrestrial planets (ETPs) as…

The quest to discover exoplanets is one of the most important missions in astrophysics, and is widely performed using the transit method, which allows for the detection of exoplanets down to the size of Mercury. However, to confirm these…

We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…

Colour-magnitude diagrams form a traditional way of presenting luminous objects in the Universe and compare them to each others. Here, we estimate the photometric distance of 44 transiting exoplanetary systems. Parallaxes for seven systems…

The PLanetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission will begin its four-year nominal mission in early 2027 by monitoring its Long-duration Observation Phase field at South (LOPS2) for at least two years continuously. The…

The transit method, during which a planet's presence is inferred by measuring the reduction in flux as it passes in front of its parent star, is a highly successful exoplanet detection and characterization technique. During transit, the…

We present a new method for differentiating between planetary transits and eclipsing binaries based on the presence of the ellipsoidal light variations. These variations can be used to detect stellar secondaries with masses ~0.2 M_sun…

The PLATO space mission is designed to detect telluric planets in the habitable zone of solar type stars, and simultaneously characterise the host star using ultra high precision photometry. The photometry will be performed on board using…

Nearby giant exoplanets offer an opportunity to search for moons (exomoons) orbiting them. Here, we present a simulation framework for investigating the possibilities of detecting exomoons via their astrometric signal in planet-to-star…

To prepare for the analyses of the future PLATO light curves, we develop a deep learning model, Panopticon, to detect transits in high precision photometric light curves. Since PLATO's main objective is the detection of temperate Earth-size…

We report parallaxes and proper motions from the Hawaii Infrared Parallax Program for eight nearby M dwarf stars with transiting exoplanets discovered by Kepler. We combine our directly measured distances with mass-luminosity and…

Recently, we introduced PLanetary Atmospheric Tool for Observer Noobs (PLATON), a Python package that calculates model transmission spectra for exoplanets and retrieves atmospheric characteristics based on observed spectra. We now expand…

Earth-mass exoplanets on year-long orbits and cool gas giants (CGG) on decade-long orbits lie at the edge of current detection limits. The Terra Hunting Experiment (THE) will take nightly radial velocity (RV) observations on HARPS3 of at…

Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and Centaurs are remnants of our planetary system formation, and their physical properties have invaluable information for evolutionary theories. Stellar occultation is a ground-based method for studying these…

Chance-aligned sources or blended companions can cause false positives in planetary transit detections or simply bias the determination of the candidate properties. In the era of high-precision space-based photometers, the need for…

Astrometric measurements are presented for seven nearby stars with previously detected planets: six M dwarfs (GJ 317, GJ 667C, GJ 581, GJ 849, GJ 876, and GJ 1214) and one K dwarf (BD $-$10 3166). Measurements are also presented for six…

Continuous, high-precision photometry from space revolutionized many fields of stellar astrophysics, and that extends to the well-studied families of RR Lyrae and Cepheid variable stars as well. After the pioneering work of MOST, the CoRoT…

The Kepler Mission was launched on March 6, 2009 to perform a photometric survey of more than 100,000 dwarf stars to search for terrestrial-size planets with the transit technique. Follow-up observations of planetary candidates identified…

Searching for transits provides a very promising technique for finding close-in extra-solar planets. Transiting planets present the advantage of allowing one to determine physical properties such as mass and radius unambiguously. The…

Searches for extrasolar planets have uncovered an astonishing diversity of planetary systems, yet the frequency of solar system analogs remains unknown. The gravitational microlensing planet search method is potentially sensitive to…