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We investigate the microlensing effects on a source star surrounded by a circumstellar disk, as a function of wavelength. The microlensing light curve of the system encodes the geometry and surface brightness profile of the disk. In the…
The models that seek to explain the reflection spectrum in black hole binaries usually invoke a point-like primary source of hard X-rays. This source illuminates the accretion disk and gives rise to the discrete (lines) and…
Pupil-mapping is a technique whereby a uniformly-illuminated input pupil, such as from starlight, can be mapped into a non-uniformly illuminated exit pupil, such that the image formed from this pupil will have suppressed sidelobes, many…
Circumstellar disks play an important role in many stages of the evolution of stars. However, it is only possible to directly image circumstellar disks for a few of the nearest stars. For massive stars, the situation is even more difficult,…
We have developed a universal approach to compute accurately the brightness of eclipsing binary systems during the transit of a planet in front of the stellar disk. This approach is uniform for all values of the system parameters and…
The profile of the fluorescent iron line from black hole accretion disks is a powerful diagnostic of black hole properties, such as spin and inclination. The state-of-the-art, however, considers an accretion disk whose angular momentum is…
We develop an inversion technique of annual scattered light curves to sketch a two-dimensional albedo map of exoplanets in face-on orbits. As a test-bed for future observations of extrasolar terrestrial planets, we apply this mapping…
The orbital inclination of an eclipsing binary is generally determined through light curve analysis. Binary parameters in the light curve analysis are typically constrained through the use of optimization and sampling techniques. We propose…
We carried out numerical experiments on the evaluation of the possibilities of obtaining the information about brightness distributions for the components of eclipsing variables from the data of high-precision photometry expected for…
The viscous evolution of a thin disc around a central object is considered. Such discs are described by self-similar solutions in which either all or none of the inflowing mass accretes. An approximate solution for the partial accretion…
Exoplanet orbital eccentricities offer valuable clues about the history of planetary systems. Eccentric, Jupiter-sized planets are particularly interesting: they may link the "cold" Jupiters beyond the ice line to close-in hot Jupiters,…
In this review, I summarize the main X-ray/hard X-ray properties of the accretion flows around black holes and neutron stars based on recent broad-band spectral and timing observations performed by the BeppoSAX and Rossi X-ray Timing…
We investigate the luminosity of the accretion disk for a static black hole surrounded by dark matter with anisotropic pressure. We calculate all basic orbital parameters of test particles in the accretion disk, such as angular velocity,…
To address the discrepancy where disk sizes exceed those predicted by standard models, we explore two extensions to disk size estimates within the UV/optical wavelength range: disk winds and color correction. We provide detailed,…
Doppler tomography is a technique that has revolutionised the interpretation of the phase-resolved spectroscopic observations of interacting binary systems. We present the results of our investigation of reversing the velocity axis to…
Pupil-mapping is a technique whereby a uniformly-illuminated input pupil, such as from starlight, can be mapped into a non-uniformly illuminated exit pupil, such that the image formed from this pupil will have suppressed sidelobes, many…
This tutorial is an introduction to High-Contrast Imaging, a technique that enables astronomers to isolate light from faint planets and/or circumstellar disks that would otherwise be lost amidst the light of their host stars. Although…
A new method is developed to calculate the amplitude of the galactic warps generated by a torque due to external forces. This takes into account that the warp is produced as a reorientation of the different rings which constitute the disc…
Planets form in discs of gas and dust around stars, and continue to grow by accretion of disc material while available. Massive planets clear a gap in their protoplanetary disc, but can still accrete gas through a circumplanetary disk. For…
For an accretion disk around a black hole, the strong relativistic effects affect every aspect of the radiation from the disk, including its spectrum, light-curve, and image. This work investigates in detail how the images of a thin disk…