Related papers: Determining Exoplanetary Oblateness Using Transit …
We report photometric and radial velocity observations of the XO-4 transiting planetary system, conducted with the FLWO 1.2m telescope and the 8.2m Subaru Telescope. Based on the new light curves, the refined transit ephemeris of XO-4b is…
K2-139 b is a warm Jupiter with an orbital period of 28.4 d, but only three transits of this system have previously been observed, in the long-cadence mode of K2, limiting the precision with which the orbital period can be determined, and…
The Rossiter-McLaughlin effect allows us to measure the projected stellar obliquity of exoplanets. From the spin-orbit alignment, planet formation and migration theories can be tested to improve our understanding of the currently observed…
We report the discovery of a Neptune-size (R_p = 3.87 +/- 0.06 R_Earth) transiting circumbinary planet, Kepler-1661 b, found in the Kepler photometry. The planet has a period of ~175 days and its orbit precesses with a period of only 35…
The tidal interactions between a planet and moon can provide insight into the properties of the host planet. The recent exomoon candidates Kepler-1708 b-i and Kepler-1625 b-i are Neptune-sized satellites orbiting Jupiter-like planets and…
Results on the obliquity of exoplanet host stars -- the angle between the stellar spin axis and the planetary orbital axis -- provide important diagnostic information for theories describing planetary formation. Here we present the first…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
Transiting planets around rapidly rotating stars are not amenable to precise radial velocity observations, such as are used for planet candidate validation, as they have wide, rotationally broadened stellar lines. Such planets can, however,…
The angle between the spin axis of the host star and the orbit of its planets (i.e., the stellar obliquity) is precious information about the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. Measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect…
Broadband flux measurements centred around [3.6 $\mu$m] and [4.5 $\mu$m] obtained with Spitzer during the occultation of seven extrasolar planets by their host stars have been combined with parallax measurements to compute the absolute…
Ground-based observations of the secondary transit in the 2MASS K band are presented for the hot Jupiter WASP-121b. These are the first occultation observations of an extrasolar planet carried out with an instrument attached to a 1m-class…
We report a detailed characterization of the Kepler-19 system. This star was previously known to host a transiting planet with a period of 9.29 days, a radius of 2.2 R$_\oplus$ and an upper limit on the mass of 20 M$_\oplus$. The presence…
We present a search for exomoons around the Jupiter-like exoplanet Kepler-167e using a NIRSpec JWST transit. Our 60 hour time series clearly reveals the enormous impact of long-term trends in NIRSpec data, specifically a gradual flux drift…
Radial-velocity observations of Kepler candidates obtained with the SOPHIE and HARPS-N spectrographs have permitted unveiling the nature of the five giant planets Kepler-41b, Kepler-43b, Kepler-44b, Kepler-74b, and Kepler-75b, the massive…
The advent of space-based photometry missions such as CoRoT, Kepler and TESS has sparkled the development of asteroseismology and exoplanetology. The advent of PLATO will further strengthen such multi-disciplinary studies. Testing…
Models are developed to simulate lightcurves of stars dimmed by transiting exoplanets with and without rings. These models are then applied to \textit{Kepler} photometry to search for planetary rings in a sample of 21 exoplanets, mostly hot…
Planetary transits provide a unique opportunity to investigate the surface distributions of star spots. Our aim is to determine if, with continuous observation (such as the data that will be provided by the Kepler mission), we can in…
Solar system planets move on almost circular orbits. In strong contrast, many massive gas giant exoplanets travel on highly elliptical orbits, whereas the shape of the orbits of smaller, more terrestrial, exoplanets remained largely…
Kepler will monitor enough stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the Kepler photometry of such transits with precise radial velocity (RV)…
Measures of exoplanet bulk densities indicate that small exoplanets with radius less than 3 Earth radii ($R_\oplus$) range from low-density sub-Neptunes containing volatile elements to higher density rocky planets with Earth-like or…