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Statistical analyses of large surveys for transiting planets such as the Kepler mission must account for systematic errors and biases. Transit detection depends not only on the planet's radius and orbital period, but also on host star…
In recent years, technical and theoretical work to detect moons and rings around exoplanets has been attempted. The small mass/size ratios between moons and planets means this is very challenging, having only one exoplanetary system where…
Motivated by the large number of compact extrasolar planetary systems discovered by the Kepler Mission, this paper considers perturbations due to possible additional outer planets. The discovered compact systems sometimes contain multiple…
We know little about the outermost exoplanets in planetary systems, because our detection methods are insensitive to moderate-mass planets on wide orbits. However, debris discs can probe the outer-planet population, because dynamical…
Over the last two decades, the discovery of exoplanets has fundamentally changed our perception of the universe and humanity's place within it. Recent work indicates that a solar system's X-ray and high energy particle environment is of…
The probability that an exoplanet transits its host star is high for planets in close orbits, but drops off rapidly for increasing semimajor axes. This makes transit surveys for planets with large semimajor axes orbiting bright stars…
We explore the potential of polarimetry as a tool for detecting and characterizing exorings. For that purpose, we have improved the publicly available photometric code Pryngles by adding the results of radiative transfer calculations that…
In support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy, this whitepaper outlines some key technology challenges pertaining to the remote search for life in exoplanetary systems. Finding evidence for life on rocky planets outside of our solar…
Previous work has established the enhanced occurrence of compact systems of multiple small exoplanets around metal-poor stars. Understanding the origin of this effect in the planet formation process is a topic of ongoing research. Here we…
Rocky planets are common around other stars, but their atmospheric properties remain largely unconstrained. Thanks to a wealth of recent planet discoveries and upcoming advances in observing capability, we are poised to characterize the…
Stars with planets at intermediate metallicities ([-0.7,-0.2] dex) exhibit properties that differ from the general field stars. Thirteen stars with planets reported in this metallicity range belong to the thick disc, while only one planet…
Exoplanetary science is a very active field of astronomy nowadays, with questions still opened such as how planetary systems form and evolve (occurrence, process), why such a diversity of exoplanets is observed (mass, radius, orbital…
The detected exoplanet population displays a dearth of planets with sizes of about two Earth radii, the so-called radius gap. This is interpreted as an evolutionary effect driven by a variety of possible atmospheric mass loss processes of…
New discoveries of transiting extrasolar planets are reported weekly. Ground based surveys as well as space borne observatories like CoRoT and Kepler are responsible for filling the statistical voids of planets on distant stellar systems. I…
Some exoplanets have much higher densities than expected from stellar abundances of planet-forming elements. There are two theories - metal-rich formation hypothesis and naked core hypothesis - that explain how formation and evolution can…
Star compositions are essential for examining densities and compositional ranges of rocky exoplanets, testing their similarity to Earth. Stellar elemental abundances and planetary orbital data show that of the ~5000 known minerals,…
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…
Characterizing the dependence of the orbital architectures and formation environments on the eccentricity distribution of planets is vital for understanding planet formation. In this work, we perform statistical eccentricity studies of…
Of the approximately 350 extrasolar planets currently known, of order 10% orbit evolved stars with radii R >~ 2.5 R_sun. These planets are of particular interest because they tend to orbit more massive hosts, and have been subjected to…
Thousands of extrasolar planets have been discovered, and it is clear that the galactic planetary census draws on a diversity greatly exceeding that exhibited by the solar system's planets. We review significant landmarks in the chronology…