Related papers: Disentangling planetary and stellar activity featu…
The spherical Jeans equation is widely used to estimate the mass content of a stellar systems with apparent spherical symmetry. However, this method suffers from a degeneracy between the assumed mass density and the kinematic anisotropy…
Context. Distinguishing between a signal induced by either stellar activity or a planet is currently the main challenge in radial velocity searches for low-mass exoplanets. Even when the presence of a transiting planet and hence its period…
We determine the starspot detection rate in exoplanetary transit light curves for M and K dwarf stars observed by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) using various starspot filling factors and starspot distributions. We used…
We analysed the chromatic data of the planetary transits observed with CoRoT to supply homogeneous time series in each of the CoRoT colours. In a first step, we cleaned the chromatic light curves from the contamination of nearby stars and…
The motion of two planets around a Sun-like star under the combined effects of mutual interaction and tidal dissipation is investigated. The secular behaviour of the system is analyzed using two different approaches. First, we solve the…
Variability in the light curves of spotted, rotating stars is often non-sinusoidal and quasi-periodic --- spots move on the stellar surface and have finite lifetimes, causing stellar flux variations to slowly shift in phase. A strictly…
Measuring starspot temperatures is crucial for understanding stellar magnetic activity, as it affects stellar brightness variations, influences exoplanet transit measurements, and provides constraints on the physical conditions and energy…
In this paper we describe an algorithm and deduce the related mathematical formulae that allows the computation of observed fluxes in stellar and planetary systems with arbitrary number of bodies being part of a transit or occultation…
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of wide-field sky surveys to search for a variety of transient objects. Using relatively short focal lengths, the optics of these systems produce undersampled stellar images often marred by a…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets more than 20 years ago, there has been an increasing need for photometric and spectroscopic models to characterize these systems. While imaging has been used extensively for Solar System bodies…
Stellar magnetic activity is a source of noise in the study of the transits of extrasolar planets. It induces flux variations which affect significantly the transit depth determination and the derivations of planetary and stellar…
We present the first exact analytical solutions for exoplanet transit light curves under arbitrary real power-law limb darkening, $I(\mu) = I_0\mu^\alpha$ with $\alpha > -2$, removing the two-decade restriction to integer-polynomial forms.…
The presence of silicate material in known rings in the Solar System raises the possibility of ring systems existing even within the snow line -- where most transiting exoplanets are found. Previous studies have shown that the detection of…
Transit photometry is perhaps the most successful method for detecting exoplanets to date. However, a substantial amount of signal processing is needed since the dip in the signal detected, an indication that there is a planet in transit,…
This paper is part of an effort to correct the transmission spectra of a transiting planet orbiting an active star. In Paper I (Cracchiolo et al. 2020) we have demonstrated a methodology to minimize the potential bias induced by unocculted…
We present the results of numerical experiments to assess degeneracies in lightcurve models of starspots. Using synthetic lightcurves generated with the Cheetah starspot modeling code, we explore the extent to which photometric light curves…
We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical experiment has been designed to…
Stellar variability impacts radial velocities at various timescales and therefore the detectability of exoplanets and the mass determination based on this technique. It is necessary to implement systematic studies, to delineate the current…
We explore the sensitivity of limb darkening coefficients computed from stellar atmosphere models to different least-squares fitting methods. We demonstrate that conventional methods are strongly biased to fitting the stellar limb. Our…
(abridged) A method for simulating light curves containing stellar micro-variability for a range of spectral types and ages, based on parameter-by-parameter scaling of a multi-component fit to the solar irradiance power spectrum (from…