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The new CARMENES instrument comprises two high-resolution and high-stability spectrographs that are used to search for habitable planets around M dwarfs in the visible and near-infrared regime via the Doppler technique. Characterising our…
Eclipsing planetary systems give us an important window on extrasolar planet atmospheres. By measuring the depth of the secondary eclipse, when the planet moves behind the star, we can estimate the strength of the thermal emission from the…
Most known terrestrial planets orbit small stars with radii less than 60% that of the Sun. Theoretical models predict that these planets are more vulnerable to atmospheric loss than their counterparts orbiting Sun-like stars. To determine…
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…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will revolutionize our understanding of exoplanets with transit spectroscopy of a wide range of mature planets close to their host stars ($<$2 AU) and with coronagraphic imaging and spectroscopy of…
An increasing number of potentially habitable terrestrial planets and planet candidates are found by ongoing planet search programs. The search for atmospheric signatures to establish planetary habitability and the presence of life might be…
Terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars are promising targets for transmission spectroscopy with existing or near-future instrumentation. The atmospheric composition of such rocky planets remains an open question, especially given the…
The presence of an atmosphere over sufficiently long timescales is widely perceived as one of the most prominent criteria associated with planetary surface habitability. We address the crucial question as to whether the seven Earth-sized…
The TRAPPIST-1 system is comprised of seven Earth-sized rocky planets in small orbits around a Jupiter-sized ultracool dwarf star 12 parsec away. These planets cover an irradiation range similar to the range of the inner solar system. Three…
We propose to use Kepler in 2-wheel mode to conduct a detailed search for Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs (spectral types from M7 to L3). This population of objects presents several advantages for exoplanet…
We report the detection of an atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet, GJ 1132 b, which is similar to Earth in terms of size and density. The atmospheric transmission spectrum was detected using Hubble WFC3 measurements and shows spectral…
Sub-Neptune planets, with sizes and masses between those of Earth and Neptune, dominate the exoplanet population. Sub-Neptunes are expected to be the most diverse family of the exoplanet population, potentially including rocky gas dwarfs,…
With JWST's successful deployment and unexpectedly high fuel reserves, measuring the masses of sub-Neptunes transiting bright, nearby stars will soon become the bottleneck for characterizing the atmospheres of small exoplanets via…
Transmission spectra contain a wealth of information about the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. However, large thermal and chemical gradients along the line of sight can lead to biased inferences in atmospheric retrievals. In order to…
Clouds are ubiquitous in extrasolar planet atmospheres and are critical to our understanding of planetary climate and chemistry. They also represent one of the greater challenges to overcome when trying to interpret transit transmission…
Stellar contamination has long been recognized as a major bottleneck in transmission spectroscopy, limiting our ability to accurately characterize exoplanet atmospheres-particularly for terrestrial worlds. In response, significant…
Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…
Recently, the first JWST measurement of thermal emission from a rocky exoplanet was reported. The inferred dayside brightness temperature of TRAPPIST-1 b at 15 $\mu$m is consistent with the planet having no atmosphere and therefore no…
The search for water-rich Earth-sized exoplanets around low-mass stars is rapidly gaining attention because they represent the best opportunity to characterize habitable planets in the near future. Understanding the atmospheres of these…
With the prevalence of wide-field, time-domain photometric sky surveys, the number of eclipsing white dwarf systems being discovered is increasing dramatically. An efficient method to follow these up will be key to determining any…