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The number of known transiting exoplanets is rapidly increasing, which has recently inspired significant interest as to whether they can host a detectable moon. Although there has been no such example where the presence of a satellite was…
Clouds are often considered a highly uncertain barrier for detecting biosignatures on exoplanets, especially given intuition gained from transit surveys. However, for direct imaging reflected light observations, clouds could increase the…
The number of exoplanets detected using gravitational microlensing technique is currently larger than 200, which enables population studies. Microlensing is uniquely sensitive to low-mass planets orbiting at separations of several…
Aims. We used realistic three-dimensional (3D) radiative hydrodynamical (RHD) simulations from the Stagger-grid and synthetic images computed with the radiative transfer code Optim3D to provide interferometric observables to extract the…
We present the results of simulations on the detectability of $O_2$ in the atmosphere of Earth twins around nearby low mass stars using high resolution transmission spectroscopy. We explore such detectability with each of the three upcoming…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres provide us the opportunity to improve our understanding of these objects just as remote sensing in our own solar system has increased our understanding of the solar system bodies. The challenge is to…
Clouds have been shown to be present in many exoplanetary atmospheres. Cloud formation modeling predicts considerable inhomogeneities of cloud cover, consistent with optical phase curve observations. However, optical phase curves cannot…
Observations of stellar surfaces - except for the Sun - are hampered by their tiny angular extent, while observed spectral lines are smeared by averaging over the stellar surface, and by stellar rotation. Exoplanet transits can be used to…
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has successfully discovered thousands of exoplanet candidates using the transit method, including hundreds of stars with multiple transiting planets. In order to estimate the frequency of these valuable…
Gravitational microlensing finds planets through their gravitational influence on the light coming from a more distant background star. The presence of the planet is then inferred from the tell-tale brightness variations of the background…
The detection of extrasolar planets' atmospheres requires very demanding observations. For planets that can not be spatially separated from their host stars, i.e. the vast majority of planets, the transiting planets are the only ones…
Before an exoplanet transit, atmospheric refraction bends light into the line of sight of an observer. The refracted light forms a stellar mirage, a distorted secondary image of the host star. I model this phenomenon and the resultant…
Future space-based direct imaging missions will perform low-resolution (R$<$100) optical (0.3-1~$\mu$m) spectroscopy of planets, thus enabling reflected spectroscopy of cool giants. Reflected light spectroscopy is encoded with rich…
The detections of small, rocky exoplanets have surged in recent years and will likely continue to do so. To know whether a rocky exoplanet is habitable, we have to characterise its atmosphere and surface. A promising characterisation method…
The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the first opportunity to search for signs of habitability and life on non-transiting terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast, high-resolution instrumentation. However, the suite of…
The weak orbital-phase dependent reflection signal of an exoplanet contains information on the planet surface, such as the distribution of continents and oceans on terrestrial planets. This light curve is usually studied in the time domain,…
Tidal interactions between short-period exoplanets and their host stars drive orbital decay and have likely led to engulfment of planets by their stars. Precise transit timing surveys, with baselines now spanning decades for some planets,…
Research into light curves from stars (temporal variation of brightness) has completely changed how exoplanets are discovered or characterised. This study including star light curves from the Kepler dataset as a way to discover exoplanets…