Related papers: Transit Photometry as an Exoplanet Discovery Metho…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets, those most adequate for life to begin and evolve have been sought. Due to observational bias, however, most of the discovered planets so far are gas giants, precluding their habitability.…
Space-based photometric surveys have discovered large numbers of planets transiting other stars, but these observe in a single band-pass and yield only the planet radius, orbital period, and transit duration. Information on the masses,…
One of the great quests of astronomy is to obtain the spectrum of a terrestrial planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star, and the dominant challenge in doing so is to isolate the light of the planet from that of the star.…
We propose a method for observing transiting exoplanets with near-infrared high-resolution spectrometers. We aim to create a robust data analysis method for recovering atmospheric transmission spectra from transiting exoplanets over a wide…
The presence of silicate material in known rings in the Solar System raises the possibility of ring systems existing even within the snow line -- where most transiting exoplanets are found. Previous studies have shown that the detection of…
Searching for extrasolar planets by direct detection is extremely challenging for current instrumentation. Indirect methods, that measure the effect of a planet on its host star, are much more promising and have indeed led to the discovery…
There is a unique solution of the planet and star parameters from a planet transit light curve with two or more transits if the planet has a circular orbit and the light curve is observed in a band pass where limb darkening is negligible.…
Transit photometry is currently the most efficient and sensitive method for detecting extrasolar planets (exoplanets) and a large majority of confirmed exoplanets have been detected with this method. The substantial success of space-based…
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…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while…
Transmission spectra probe the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets, but these observations are also subject to signals introduced by magnetic active regions on host stars. Here we outline scientific opportunities in the next decade for…
Observational biases distort our view of nature, such that the patterns we see within a surveyed population of interest are often unrepresentative of the truth we seek. Transiting planets currently represent the most informative data set on…
I present a review of observational efforts to study known extrasolar planets by methods that are complementary to the radial velocity technique. I describe the current state of attempts to detect and characterize such planets by…
For extrasolar planets with orbital periods, P>10 days, radial velocity surveys find non-circular orbital eccentricities are common, <e>~0.3. Future surveys for extrasolar planets using the transit technique will also have sensitivity to…
A promising method for detecting earth-sized exoplanets is the timing analysis of a known transit. The technique allows a search for variations in either the transit duration or the center induced by the perturbation of a third body, e.g. a…
We describe a project (transitsearch.org) currently attempting to discover transiting intermediate-period planets orbiting bright parent stars, and we simulate that project's performance. The discovery of such a transit would be an…
We present refined values for the physical parameters of transiting exoplanets, based on a self-consistent and uniform analysis of transit light curves and the observable properties of the host stars. Previously it has been difficult to…
The transit method is one of the most relevant exoplanet detection techniques, which consists of detecting periodic eclipses in the light curves of stars. This is not always easy due to the presence of noise in the light curves, which is…
We present a new method to assess the properties of transiting planet candidates by multicolor photometry. By analyzing multicolor transit/eclipse light curves and apparent magnitudes of the target in parallel, this method attempts to…