Related papers: Two decades of Exoplanetary Science with Adaptive …
The physics of brown dwarfs has continuously improved since the discovery of these astrophysical bodies. The first important developments were devoted to the description of their mechanical structure, with the derivation of an appropriate…
Doppler planet searches revealed that many giant planets orbit close to their host star or in highly eccentric orbits. These and subsequent observations inspired new theories of planet formation that invoke gravitation interactions in…
The recent detection of the transit of very massive substellar companions (CoRoT-3b, Deleuil et al. 2008; CoRoT-15b, Bouchy et al. 2010; WASP-30b, Anderson et al. 2010; Hat-P-20b, Bakos et al. 2010) provides a strong constraint to planet…
Young brown dwarfs and directly-imaged exoplanets have enticingly similar photometric and spectroscopic characteristics, indicating that their cool, low gravity atmospheres should be studied in concert. Similarities between the peculiar…
Over the past three decades, exoplanet research has delivered an extensive census of planets spanning a wide range of masses, sizes, and orbital configurations. Despite this progress, the physical interpretation of these populations remains…
With the discovery of the first transiting extrasolar planetary system back to 1999, a great number of projects started to hunt for other similar systems. Because of the incidence rate of such systems was unknown and the length of the…
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…
Understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of habitable planets in extrasolar planetary systems is a challenging task. In this respect, systems with multiple giant planets and/or multiple stars present special complications. The…
The observable characteristics and subsequent evolution of young stellar populations is dominated by their massive stars. As our understanding of those massive stars and the factors affecting their evolution improves, so our interpretation…
One of the major goals for astronomy in the next decades is the remote search for biosignatures (i.e.\ the spectroscopic evidence of biological activity) in exoplanets. Here, we adopt a Bayesian statistical framework to discuss the…
The search for life on extrasolar planets is based on the assumption that one can screen extrasolar planets for habitability spectroscopically. The first space born instruments able to detect as well as characterize extrasolar planets,…
In the coming years and decades, advanced space- and ground-based observatories will allow an unprecedented opportunity to probe the atmospheres and surfaces of potentially habitable exoplanets for signatures of life. Life on Earth, through…
The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…
Nearly 30 years after the discovery of the first exoplanet around a main sequence star, thousands of planets have now been confirmed. These discoveries have completely revolutionized our understanding of planetary systems, revealing types…
In this paper we discuss how we can read a planets spectrum to assess its habitability and search for the signatures of a biosphere. After a decade rich in giant exoplanet detections, observation techniques have now reached the ability to…
Extensive ground and space based surveys have now characterized the properties of thousands of exoplanets; their radii, masses, orbits around their host stars, and the beginnings of accurate measurements of the chemical compositions of…
Over the past decade asteroseismology has become a powerful method to systematically characterize host stars and dynamical architectures of exoplanet systems. In this contribution I review current key synergies between asteroseismology and…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
The discovery of exoplanets has both focused and expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The consideration of Earth as an exoplanet, the knowledge of the orbital parameters of individual exoplanets, and our new understanding…
This chapter reviews the current state of observational and theoretical efforts in the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres, with a focus on developments enabled through the Swiss National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR)…