Related papers: Timing by Stellar Pulsations as an Exoplanet Disco…
The magnetic activity of planet-hosting stars is an important factor to estimate the atmospheric stability of close-in exoplanets and the age of their host stars. It has long been speculated that close-in exoplanets can influence the…
The tidally tilted pulsators are a new type of oscillating star in close binary systems that have their pulsation axis in the orbital plane because of the tidal distortion caused by their companion. We describe this group of stars on the…
The next generation of exoplanet space photometry missions proposed by both NASA and ESA promise to discover small transiting planets around the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars. The physical and rotational properties of these…
Stars and their exoplanets evolve together. Depending on the physical characteristics of these systems, such as age, orbital distance and activity of the host stars, certain types of star-exoplanet interactions can dominate during given…
New insights on stellar evolution and stellar interior physics are being made possible by asteroseismology, the study of stars by the observation of their natural, resonant oscillations. Asteroseismology is making significant contributions…
We aim to investigate variations in the arrival time of coherent stellar pulsations due to the light-travel time effect to test for the presence of sub-stellar companions. Those companions are the key to one possible formation scenario of…
Usually, positions of spacecraft on interplanetary or deep space missions are determined by radar tracking from ground stations, a method by which uncertainty increases with distance from Earth. As an alternative, a spacecraft equipped with…
Phase curves, or the change in observed illumination of the planet as it orbits around its host star, help us to characterize their atmospheres. However, the variability of the host star can make their detection challenging: the presence of…
Delta Scuti ($\delta$ Sct) stars are intermediate-mass pulsators, whose intrinsic oscillations have been studied for decades. However, modelling their pulsations remains a real theoretical challenge, thereby even hampering the precise…
We present an analytic description of tides raised on a star by a small orbiting body. In particular, we highlight the disproportionate effect of eccentricity and thus the scope for using these tides to detect and characterise the orbits of…
Are there other planetary systems in our Universe? Indirect evidence has been found for planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy: the gravity of orbiting planets makes the star wobble, and the resulting periodic Doppler shifts have been…
Pulsar timing, i.e. the analysis of the arrival times of pulses from a pulsar, is a powerful tool in modern astrophysics. It allows us to measure the time delays of an electromagnetic signal caused by a number of physical processes as the…
With the discovery of the first transiting extrasolar planetary system back to 1999, a great number of projects started to hunt for other similar systems. Because of the incidence rate of such systems was unknown and the length of the…
We discuss the possibility of an autonomous navigation system for spacecraft that is based on pulsar timing data. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that are observable as variable celestial sources of electromagnetic radiation.…
Galactic history is written in the white dwarf stars. Their surface properties hint at interiors composed of matter under extreme conditions. In the forty years since their discovery, pulsating white dwarf stars have moved from side-show…
The magnetic activity levels of planet host stars may differ from that of stars not known to host planets in several ways. Hot Jupiters may induce activity in their hosts through magnetic interactions, or through tidal interactions by…
Gravitational scattering events, in which the path of an interstellar object is deflected by a pulsar or the solar system, give rise to reflex motion which can potentially be detected using pulsar timing. We determine the form of the timing…
We review ways in which observations of the changing periods of pulsating variable stars can be used to detect and directly measure their evolution. We briefly describe the two main techniques of analysis -- (O-C) analysis and wavelet…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
Planets close to their host stars are believed to undergo significant tidal interactions, leading to a progressive damping of the orbital eccentricity. Here we show that, when the orbit of the planet is excited by an outer companion, tidal…