Related papers: Measuring stellar granulation during planet transi…
We present an updated version of GRASS (the GRanulation And Spectrum Simulator, Palumbo et al. 2022) which now uses an expanded library of 22 solar lines to empirically model time-resolved spectral variations arising from solar granulation.…
Stellar granulation arises from near-surface convection and is imprinted in stellar photometric time series, yet links between granulation observables and fundamental stellar properties remain underexploited. We aim to establish a…
Light curves produced by the Kepler mission demonstrate stochastic brightness fluctuations (or "flicker") of stellar origin which contribute to the noise floor, limiting the sensitivity of exoplanet detection and characterization methods.…
The detection of small mass planets with the radial-velocity technique is now confronted with the interference of stellar noise. HARPS can now reach a precision below the meter-per-second, which corresponds to the amplitudes of different…
We present and describe a new version of the spot oscillation and planet code, SOAPv4. Our aim is to demonstrate its capabilities in modeling stellar activity in the context of RV measurements and its effects on transmission spectra. To do…
Stellar surface heterogeneities, such as spots and faculae, often contaminate exoplanet transit spectra, hindering precise atmospheric characterization. We demonstrate a novel, epoch-based, model-independent method to mitigate stellar…
Transmission spectra are differential measurements that utilize stellar illumination to probe transiting exoplanet atmospheres. Any spectral difference between the illuminating light source and the disk-integrated stellar spectrum due to…
In this PhD dissertation, I discuss issues of the Radial Velocities (RV) and transit methods. These techniques allow us to derive the mass and radius of an exoplanet, necessary to model its bulk structure and to have insight on its…
Stellar activity features such as spots can create complications in determining planetary parameters through spectroscopic and photometric observations. The overlap of a transiting planet and a stellar spot, for instance, can produce…
Stellar granulation generates fluctuations in photometric and spectroscopic data whose properties depend on the stellar type, composition, and evolutionary state. In this study, we aim to detect the signatures of stellar granulation, link…
We investigate the effect of planetary rotation on the transit spectrum of an extrasolar giant planet. During ingress and egress, absorption features arising from the planet's atmosphere are Doppler shifted by of order the planet's…
The atmospheres of cool stars are temporally and spatially inhomogeneous due to the effects of convection.The influence of this inhomogeneity, referred to as granulation, on colours has never been investigated over a large range of…
As a planet transits the face of a star, it accelerates along the line-of-sight. The changing delay in the propagation of photons produces an apparent deceleration of the planet across the sky throughout the transit. This persistent…
Tens of thousands of solar-like oscillating stars have been observed by space missions. Their photometric variability in the Fourier domain can be parameterized by a sum of two super-Lorentizian functions for granulation and a…
We present an extension of the formalism recently proposed by Pepper & Gaudi to evaluate the yield of transit surveys in homogeneous stellar systems, incorporating the impact of correlated noise on transit time-scales on the detectability…
We typically measure the radii of transiting exoplanets from the transit depth, which is given by the ratio of cross-sectional areas of the planet and star. However, if a star has dark starspots (or bright regions) distributed throughout…
Surface granulation of the Sun is primarily a consequence of thermal transport in the outer 1 % of the radius. Its typical scale of about 1 - 2 Mm is set by the balance between convection, free-streaming radiation, and the strong density…
High-resolution images of the solar surface show a granulation pattern of hot rising and cooler downward-sinking material -- the top of the deep-reaching solar convection zone. Convection plays a role for the thermal structure of the solar…
The granulation background seen in the power spectrum of a solar-like oscillator poses a serious challenge for extracting precise and detailed information about the stellar oscillations. Using a 3D hydrodynamical simulation of the Sun…
The recent discovery of a planetary transit in the star HD 209458, and the subsequent highly precise observation of the transit lightcurve with Hubble Space Telescope, is encouraging to search for any phenomena that might induce small…