Related papers: ExTrA: Exoplanets in Transit and their Atmospheres
The field of exoplanetary science has diversified rapidly over recent years as the field has progressed from exoplanet detection to exoplanet characterization. For those planets known to transit, the primary transit and secondary eclipse…
Previous generation of instruments have the opportunity to discover thousands of extra-solar planets and more will come with the current and future planet-search missions. In order to go one step further in the characterization of…
A number of transiting, potentially habitable Earth-sized exoplanets have recently been detected around several nearby M dwarf stars. These worlds represent important targets for atmospheric characterization for the upcoming NASA James Webb…
In these proceedings I discuss various extragalactic surveys which will be undertaken over the next few years and which will be complementary to any HI and/or continuum surveys with the SKA-pathfinder telescopes. I concentrate on the…
The critical first step in the search for life on exoplanets over the next decade is to determine whether rocky planets transiting small M-dwarf stars possess atmospheres and, if so, what processes sculpt them over time. Because of its…
The most productive tracer of exoplanetary atmospheric escape is the measurement of excess absorption in the near-infrared metastable helium triplet during transits. Atmospheric escape of a close-in planet's atmosphere plays a role in its…
This paper presents a conceptual design for a spectrometer designed specifically for characterizing transiting exoplanets with space-borne infrared telescopes. The design adopting cross-dispersion is intended to be simple, compact, highly…
High Time Resolution Astrophysics (HTRA) concerns itself with observations on short scales normally defined as being lower than the conventional read-out time of a CCD. As such it is concerned with condensed objects such as neutron stars,…
In the coming decades, research in extrasolar planets aims to advance two goals: 1) detecting and characterizing low-mass planets increasingly similar to the Earth, and 2) improving our understanding of planet formation. We present a new…
This paper is to introduce an online tool for the prediction of exoplanet transit light curves. Small telescopes can readily capture exoplanet transits under good weather conditions when the combination of a bright star and a large…
Direct imaging of exoplanets presents a formidable technical challenge owing to the small angular separation and high contrast between exoplanets and their host stars. High Dispersion Coronagraphy (HDC) is a pathway to achieve unprecedented…
Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres provide us the opportunity to improve our understanding of these objects just as remote sensing in our own solar system has increased our understanding of the solar system bodies. The challenge is to…
Giant exoplanets on 10-100 au orbits have been directly imaged around young stars. The peak of the thermal emission from these warm young planets is in the near-infrared (~1-5 microns), whereas mature, temperate exoplanets (i.e., those…
The technique of transmission spectroscopy -- the variation of the planetary radius with wavelength due to opacity sources in the planet's terminator region -- has been to date one of the most successful in the characterization of exoplanet…
Studies of future space- and ground-based exoplanet surveys often rely on models of planetary systems to simulate instrument response, estimate scientific yields, perform trade analyses, and study efficient observation strategies. Until…
The acronym ESPRESSO stems for Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations; this instrument will be the next VLT high resolution spectrograph. The spectrograph will be installed at the Combined-Coud\'e…
We propose a new concept for spectral characterization of transiting exoplanets with future space-based telescopes. This concept, called as densified pupil spectroscopy, allows us to perform high, stable spectrophotometry against telescope…
The exoplanet revolution is well underway. The last decade has seen order-of-magnitude increases in the number of known planets beyond the Solar system. Detailed characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres provide the best means for…
Transmission spectroscopy facilitates the detection of molecules and/or clouds in the atmospheres of exoplanets. Such studies rely heavily on space-based or large ground-based observatories, as one needs to perform time- resolved, high…
A high level of diversity has already been observed among the planets of our own Solar System. As such, one expects extrasolar planets to present a wide range of distinctive features, therefore the characterisation of Earth- and super…