Related papers: Disentangling Blended K2 Photometry: Determining t…
We have used the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope} to observe two transiting planetary systems orbiting low mass stars discovered in the \Kepler \Ktwo mission. The system K2-3 (EPIC 201367065) hosts three planets while EPIC 202083828 (K2-26)…
Future missions, including the Habitable Worlds Observatory, will aim to image Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars in reflected light. Determining whether an exoplanet is in the habitable zone of its star may be difficult in…
Surveys of nearby field stars indicate that stellar binaries are common, yet little is known about the effects that these companions may have on planet formation and evolution. The Friends of Hot Jupiters project uses three complementary…
The Doppler technique measures the reflex radial motion of a star induced by the presence of companions and is the most successful method to detect exoplanets. If several planets are present, their signals will appear combined in the radial…
The orientation between a star's spin axis and a planet's orbital plane provides valuable information about the system's formation and dynamical history. For non-transiting planets at wide separations, true stellar obliquities are…
The recently approved NASA K2 mission has the potential to multiply by an order of magnitude the number of short-period transiting planets found by Kepler around bright and low-mass stars, and to revolutionise our understanding of stellar…
This chapter reviews various methods of detecting planetary companions to stars from an observational perspective, focusing on radial velocities, astrometry, direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. For each method, this…
Transit photometry is perhaps the most successful method for detecting exoplanets to date. However, a substantial amount of signal processing is needed since the dip in the signal detected, an indication that there is a planet in transit,…
Using the adaptive optics facilities at the 200-in Hale and 10-m Keck II, we observed in the near infrared a sample of 12 binary and multiple stars and one open cluster. We used the near diffraction limited images of these systems to…
Debris disk stars are good targets for high contrast imaging searches for planetary systems, since debris disks have been shown to have a tentative correlation with giant planets. We selected 20 stars identified as debris disk hosts by the…
Many planet candidates have been detected by radial velocity variations of the primary star; they are planet candidates, because of the unknown orbit inclination. Detection of the wobble in the two other dimensions, to be measured by…
An important open question in exoplanet studies is whether planets leave detectable chemical fingerprints on their host stars. While several studies have suggested possible planetary chemical signatures in planet-hosting stars, their origin…
The complexity of composite spectra of close binary star system makes study of the spectra of their component stars extremely difficult. For this reason there exists very little information on the photospheric chemical composition of stars…
Photometric surveys such as Kepler have the precision to identify exoplanet and eclipsing binary candidates from only a single transit. K2, with its 75d campaign duration, is ideally suited to detect significant numbers of single-eclipsing…
The light curve of an eclipsing system shows anomalies whenever the eclipsing body passes in front of active regions on the eclipsed star. In some cases, the pattern of anomalies can be used to determine the obliquity $\Psi$ of the eclipsed…
We report the discovery of a compact multi-planet system orbiting the relatively nearby (78pc) and bright ($K=8.9$) K-star, K2-266 (EPIC248435473). We identify up to six possible planets orbiting K2-266 with estimated periods of P$_b$ =…
The multi-planetary system HD 106315 was recently found in K2 data . The planets have periods of $P_b \sim9.55$ and $P_c \sim 21.06\,$days, and radii of $ r_b = 2.44 \pm 0.17\, $ and $r_c = 4.35 \pm 0.23\, $ $R_{\oplus}$. The brightness of…
We explore the detection condition of a wide-separation planet through the perturbation induced by the planetary caustic for various microlensing parameters, especially for the size of the source stars. By constructing the fractional…
We discuss the detectability of gravitationally bounded pairs of gas-giant planets (which we call "binary planets") in extrasolar planetary systems that are formed through orbital instability followed by planet-planet dynamical tides during…
We examine the possibility that very massive stars greatly exceeding the commonly adopted stellar mass limit of 150 Msun may be present in young star clusters in the local universe. We identify ten candidate clusters, some of which may host…