Related papers: Determining Exoplanetary Oblateness Using Transit …
Knowledge of an exoplanet's oblateness and obliquity would give clues about its formation and internal structure. In principle, a light curve of a transiting planet bears information about the planet's shape, but previous work has shown…
We show that the gas giant exoplanet HD 189733b is less oblate than Saturn, based on Spitzer Space Telescope photometry of seven transits. The observable manifestations of oblatenesswould have been slight anomalies during the ingress and…
We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…
We use Kepler short cadence light curves to constrain the oblateness of planet candidates in the Kepler sample. The transits of rapidly rotating planets that are deformed in shape will lead to distortions in the ingress and egress of their…
(Abridged) The solar system gas giant planets are oblate due to their rapid rotation. A measurement of the planet's projected oblateness would constrain the planet's rotational period. Planets that are synchronously rotating with their…
When studying transiting exoplanets it is common to assume a spherical planet shape. However short rotational periods can cause a planet to bulge at its equator, as is the case with Saturn whose equatorial radius is almost 10% larger than…
Planets may be rotationally flattened, and their oblateness thus provide useful information on their formation and evolution. Here we develop a new algorithm that can compute the transit light curve due to an oblate planet very efficiently…
Increasingly precise space-based photometry uncovers higher-order effects in transits, eclipses and phase curves which can be used to characterize exoplanets in novel ways. The subtle signature induced by a rotationally deformed exoplanet…
Rapid planetary rotation can cause the equilibrium shape of a planet to be oblate. While planetary oblateness has mostly been probed by examining the subtle ingress and egress features in photometric transit light curves, we investigate the…
We present the characterization of the Kepler-93 exoplanetary system, based on three years of photometry gathered by the Kepler spacecraft. The duration and cadence of the Kepler observations, in tandem with the brightness of the star,…
The Kepler-9 system harbors three known transiting planets. The system holds significant interest for several reasons. First, the outer two planets exhibit a period ratio that is close to a 2:1 orbital commensurability, with attendant…
We present ground-based observations from the Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) of three transits of Kepler-445c---a supposed super-Earth exoplanet with properties resembling GJ 1214b---and demonstrate that the transit depth is…
Kepler-13b (KOI-13.01) is a most intriguing exoplanet system due to the rapid precession rate, exhibiting several exotic phenomena. We analyzed $Kepler$ Short Cadence data up to Quarter 14, with a total time-span of 928 days, to reveal…
Extrasolar planets that pass in front of their host star (transit) cause a temporary decrease in the apparent brightness of the star once per orbit, providing a direct measure of the planet's size and orbital period. In some systems with…
Gravity darkening induced by rapid stellar rotation provides us with a unique opportunity to characterize the spin-orbit misalignment of a planetary system through analysis of its photometric transit. We use the gravity-darkened transit…
Transiting exoplanetary systems are surpassingly important among the planetary systems since they provide the widest spectrum of information for both the planet and the host star. If a transiting planet is on an eccentric orbit, the…
HIP 41378 f is a sub-Neptune exoplanet with an anomalously low density. Its long orbital period and deep transit make it an ideal candidate for detecting oblateness photometrically. We present a new cross-platform, GPU-enabled code…
We introduce the OATMEAL survey, an effort to measure the obliquities of stars with transiting brown dwarf companions. We observed a transit of the close-in ($P_{\rm orb} = 1.74 \,$ days) brown dwarf GPX-1 b using the Keck Planet Finder…
Meter-sized ground-based telescopes are frequently used today for the follow-up of extrasolar planet candidates. While the transit signal of a Jupiter-sized object can typically be detected to a high level of confidence with small telescope…
We observed Kepler-421 during the anticipated third transit of the snow-line exoplanet Kepler-421b in order to constrain the existence and extent of transit timing variations (TTVs). Previously, the Kepler Spacecraft only observed two…