Related papers: A Framework for Planet Detection with Faint Light-…
At optical wavelengths, an exoplanet's signature is essentially reflected light from the host star - several orders of magnitude fainter. Since it is superimposed on the star spectrum its detection has been a difficult observational…
We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star…
Direct imaging of exoplanets will allow us to directly observe the planet in reflected light. Such a scenario may eventually allow for the possibility to scan the planetary surface for the presence of artificial structures made by alien…
Stars are uniform spheres, but only to first order. The way in which stellar rotation and magnetism break this symmetry places important observational constraints on stellar magnetic fields, and factors in the assessment of the impact of…
The distribution of small-scale magnetic fields in stellar photospheres is an important ingredient in our understanding of the magnetism of low mass stars. Their spatial distribution connects the field generated in the stellar interior with…
Among various techniques to search for extra-solar planets, microlensing has some unique characteristics. Contrary to all other methods which favour nearby objects, microlensing is sensitive to planets around stars at distances of several…
The phenomenon of microlensing has successfully been used to detect extrasolar planets. By observing characteristic, rare deviations in the gravitational microlensing light curve one can discover that a lens is a star--planet system. In…
The search for exoplanetary radio emission has resulted in zero conclusive detections to date. Various explanations for this have been proposed, from the observed frequency range, telescope sensitivity, to beaming of the emission. In a…
We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
Some pulsating stars are good clocks. When they are found in binary stars, the frequencies of their luminosity variations are modulated by the Doppler effect caused by orbital motion. For each pulsation frequency this manifests itself as a…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
Recent studies have demonstrated that detailed monitoring of gravitational microlensing events can reveal the presence of planets orbiting the microlensed source stars. With the potential of probing planets in the Galactic Bulge and…
With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet…
We report the discovery of a planetary system in which a super-earth orbits a late M-dwarf host. The planetary system was found from the analysis of the microlensing event OGLE-2017-BLG-0482, wherein the planet signal appears as a…
The detection of planetary transits in the light curves of active stars, featuring correlated noise in the form of stellar variability, remains a challenge. Depending on the noise characteristics, we show that the traditional technique that…
Stellar surface processes represent a fundamental limit to the detection of extrasolar planets with the currently most heavily-used techniques. As such, considerable effort has gone into trying to mitigate the impact of these processes on…
Although the extra-solar planets discovered so far are of the giant, gaseous, type, the increased sensitivity of future surveys will result in the discovery of lower mass planets. The detection of O2 in the atmosphere of a rocky extra-solar…
We study the possibility to detect extrasolar planets in M31 through pixel-lensing observations. Using a Monte Carlo approach, we select the physical parameters of the binary lens system, a star hosting a planet, and we calculate the…
Planetary atmospheres are inherently 3D objects that can have strong gradients in latitude, longitude, and altitude. Secondary eclipse mapping is a powerful way to map the 3D distribution of the atmosphere, but the data can have large…