Related papers: Direct Exoplanet Investigation using Interstellar …
X-ray observatories contribute fundamental advances in Solar System studies by probing Sun-object interactions, developing planet and satellite surface composition maps, probing global magnetospheric dynamics, and tracking astrochemical…
The requirements on space missions designed to study Terrestrial exoplanets are discussed. We then investigate whether the design of such a mission, specifically the Darwin nulling interferometer, can be carried out in a simplified…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
We propose that the presence of additional planets in extrasolar planetary systems can be detected by long-term transit timing studies. If a transiting planet is on an eccentric orbit then the presence of another planet causes a secular…
Direct imaging surveys for exoplanets commonly exclude binary stars from their target lists, leaving a large part of the overall planet demography unexplored. To address this gap in our understanding of planet formation and evolution, we…
A space-based gravitational microlensing exoplanet survey will provide a statistical census of exoplanets with masses down to 0.1 Earth-masses and orbital separations ranging from 0.5AU to infinity. This includes analogs to all the Solar…
As the number of detected extrasolar planets increases, exoplanet databases become a valuable resource, confirming some details about planetary formation, but also challenging our theories with new unexpected properties.
Detection of Jupiter mass companions to nearby solar type stars with precise radial velocity measurements is now routine, and Doppler surveys are moving towards lower velocity amplitudes. The detection of several Neptune-mass planets with…
Previous work in studying interstellar exploration by one or several probes has focused primarily either on engineering models for a spacecraft targeting a single star system, or large-scale simulations to ascertain the time required for a…
The last decade has seen a revolution in the field of asteroseismology - the study of stellar pulsations. It has become a powerful method to precisely characterise exoplanet host stars, and as a consequence also the exoplanets themselves.…
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. The detection of planets with a wide range of masses demonstrates that extra-solar planets of low mass exist. In this paper we describe a mission,…
Nearly 30 years after the discovery of the first exoplanet around a main sequence star, thousands of planets have now been confirmed. These discoveries have completely revolutionized our understanding of planetary systems, revealing types…
Astrophysical observations reveal a large diversity of radii and masses of exoplanets. It is important to characterize the interiors of exoplanets to understand planetary diversity and further determine how unique, or not, Earth is.…
Although many methods of detecting extra-solar planets have been proposed and successful implementation of some of these methods enabled a rapidly increasing number of exoplanet detections, little has been discussed about the method of…
The holy grail of exoplanet searches is an exo-Earth, an Earth mass planet in the habitable zone around a nearby star. Mass is the most important parameter of a planet and can only be measured by observing the motion of the star around the…
In the last years the direct measurement of cosmic rays received a push forward by the possibility of conducting experiments on board long duration balloon flights, satellites and on the International Space Station. The increase in the…
We propose to use low-rank matrix approximation using the component-wise L1-norm for direct imaging of exoplanets. Exoplanet detection by direct imaging is a challenging task for three main reasons: (1) the host star is several orders of…
With over 1800 planets discovered outside of the Solar System in the past two decades, the field of exoplanetology has broadened our perspective on planetary systems. Research priorities are now moving from planet detection to planet…
We outline the important role that ground-based, Doppler monitoring of exoplanetary systems will play in advancing our theories of planet formation and dynamical evolution. A census of planetary systems requires a well designed survey to be…
Recent and upcoming stabilized spectrographs are pushing the frontier for Doppler spectroscopy to detect and characterize low-mass planets. Specifications for these instruments are so impressive that intrinsic stellar variability is…