Related papers: Efficient Follow-Up of Exoplanet Transits Using Sm…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
The microlensing technique has found 10 exoplanets to date and promises to discover more in the near future. While planetary transit light curves all show a familiar shape, planetary perturbations to microlensing light curves can manifest a…
This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…
Through the international collaborators, we recently established a network of existing and working meter-class telescopes to look for planetary transit events. As a first step, we focus on the TrES3 system, and conclude that there could be…
Observations of exoplanet transits by small satellites have gained increasing attention for reducing detection biases. However, no unambiguous detection of an exoplanet has yet been demonstrated using optics with apertures smaller than 60…
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…
Of the known transiting extra-solar planets, a few have been detected through photometric follow-up observations of radial velocity planets. Perhaps the best known of these is the transiting exoplanet HD 209458b. For hot Jupiters (periods…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission measured light from stars in ~75% of the sky throughout its two year primary mission, resulting in millions of TESS 30-minute cadence light curves to analyze in the search for…
This article summarizes a workshop held on March, 2014, on the potential of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to revolutionize our knowledge of the physical properties of exoplanets through transit observations. JWST's unique…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is surveying a large fraction of the sky, generating a vast database of photometric time series data that requires thorough analysis to identify exoplanetary transit signals. Automated…
The majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of…
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 studies have shown that stellar activity features, such as occulted and non-occulted starspots, can affect the measurement of transit parameters biasing studies of transit timing variations and transmission spectra. We present…
We typically measure the radii of transiting exoplanets from the transit depth, which is given by the ratio of cross-sectional areas of the planet and star. However, if a star has dark starspots (or bright regions) distributed throughout…
We present I and B photometry of five distinct transits of the exoplanet OGLE-TR-10b. By modeling the light curves, we find the planetary radius to be R_P = 1.06 +/- 0.08 R_Jup and the stellar radius to be R_S = 1.10 +/- 0.07 R_sun. The…
Time-series photometry and spectroscopy of transiting exoplanets allow us to study their atmospheres. Unfortunately, the required precision to extract atmospheric information surpasses the design specifications of most general purpose…
The radial velocity technique is currently used to classify transiting objects. While capable of identifying grazing binary eclipses, this technique cannot reliably identify blends, a chance overlap of a faint background eclipsing binary…
We present scope (Simulated CCD Observations for Photometric Experimentation), a Python package to create a forward model of telescope detectors and simulate stellar targets with motion relative to the CCD. The primary application of this…
In the effort to characterize the masses, radii, and atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets, there is an urgent need to find examples of such planets transiting nearby M dwarfs. The MEarth Project is an ongoing effort to do so, as…