Related papers: Locating Planets in Sky Using Manual Calculations
Direct imaging and spectroscopy is the likely means by which we will someday identify, confirm, and characterize an Earth-like planet around a nearby Sun-like star. This Chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding…
Modelling techniques for the propagation of light pollution in the atmosphere allow the computation of maps of artificial night sky brightness in any direction of the sky, involving a large number of details from satellite data. Cinzano et…
We present a novel method for direct detection and characterization of exoplanets from space. This method uses four collecting telescopes, combined with phase chopping and a spectrometer, with observations on only a few baselines rather…
The discovery of habitable exoplanets has long been a heated topic in astronomy. Traditional methods for exoplanet identification include the wobble method, direct imaging, gravitational microlensing, etc., which not only require a…
Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are discovered daily, mainly by few major surveys, nevertheless many of them remain unobserved for years, even decades. Even so, there is room for new discoveries, including those submitted by smaller projects…
One proposed method for finding terrestrial planets around nearby stars is to use two spacecraft--a telescope and a specially shaped occulter that is specifically designed to prevent all but a tiny fraction of the starlight from diffracting…
We present an approach for utilizing astrometric orbit information to improve the yield of planetary images and spectra from a follow-on direct detection mission. This approach is based on the notion-strictly hypothetical-that if a…
We demonstrate that gravitational lensing can be used to discover and study planets in the habitable zones of nearby dwarf stars. If appropriate software is developed, a new generation of monitoring programs will automatically conduct a…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
We propose and evaluate the feasibility of a new strategy to search for planets via microlensing observations. This new strategy is designed to detect planets in "wide" orbits, i.e., with orbital separation, a, greater than ~1.5 R_E.…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
We propose and evaluate the feasibility of a new strategy to search for planets via microlensing. This new strategy is designed to detect planets in "wide" orbits, i.e., with orbital separation, $a$ greater than $\sim 1.5 R_E$. Planets in…
Aims: We compare the apparent difference in timing of transiting planets (or eclipsing binaries) that are observed from widely separated locations (parallactic delay). Methods: A simple geometrical argument allow us to show that the…
Several celestial bodies in co-orbital configurations exist in the solar system. However, co-orbital exoplanets have not yet been discovered. This lack may result from a degeneracy between the signal induced by co-orbital planets and other…
The growing rate of increase in the number of the discovered extra-solar planets which has consequently raised the enthusiasm to explore the universe in hope of finding earth-like planets has resulted in the wide use of Gravitational…
During the months when the galactic bulge is visible from the southern hemisphere, there are typically about 8 to 10 on-going microlensing events at any given time. If the lensing stars have planets around them, then the signature of the…
Searches for planets via gravitational lensing have focused on cases in which the projected separation, a, between planet and star is comparable to the Einstein radius, R_E. This paper considers smaller orbital separations and demonstrates…
We express the position of the Sun in the sky as a function of time and the observer's geographic coordinates. Our method is based on applying rotation matrices to vectors describing points on the celestial sphere. We also derive direct…
The challenge for optical detection of terrestial planet is the 25 magnitude brightness contrast between the planet and its host star. This paper introduces a new pupil design that produces a very dark null along its symmetry axis. By…
A simple metric can be used to determine whether a planet or exoplanet can clear its orbital zone during a characteristic time scale, such as the lifetime of the host star on the main sequence. This criterion requires only estimates of star…