Related papers: Testing known and unknown systematics in HST/WFC3 …
Exoplanetary transmission spectroscopy in the near-infrared using Hubble/NICMOS is currently ambiguous because different observational groups claim different results from the same data, depending on their analysis methodologies. Spatial…
In the past decade, the analysis of exoplanet atmospheric spectra has revealed the presence of water vapour in almost all the planets observed, with the exception of a fraction of overcast planets. Indeed, water vapour presents a large…
We report on a detailed study of the measurement stability for WFC3 IR grism stare and spatial scan observations. The excess measurement noise for both modes is established by comparing the observed and theoretical measurement…
Charge-transfer loss on the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope is a primary source of uncertainty in stellar photometry obtained with this camera. This effect, discovered shortly after the camera was…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is predicted to make great advances in the field of exoplanet atmospheres. Its 25 m2 mirror means that it can reach unprecedented levels of precision in observations of transit spectra, and can thus…
Since 2008 we have run an observational program to accurately measure the characteristics of known exoplanet systems hosting close-in transiting giant planets, i.e. hot Jupiters. Our study is based on high-quality photometric follow-up…
Photometric large scale structure (LSS) surveys probe the largest volumes in the Universe, but are inevitably limited by systematic uncertainties. Imperfect photometric calibration leads to biases in our measurements of the density fields…
We characterize the sensitivity of a double point-spread function (PSF) fitting algorithm -- employing empirical, position-dependent PSF models -- for detecting companions using the infrared channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3/IR) on…
Mapping distant worlds is the next frontier for exoplanet infrared photometry studies. Ultimately, constraining spatial and temporal properties of an exoplanet atmosphere will provide further insight into its physics. For tidally-locked hot…
We present the analysis of the hot-Jupiter KELT-7b using transmission and emission spectroscopy from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), both taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Our study uncovers a rich transmission spectrum which is…
The detection of small planets orbiting nearby stars is an important step towards the identification of Earth twins. In previous work using the Spitzer Space Telescope, we found evidence to support at least one sub-Earth-sized exoplanet…
New observational facilities are beginning to enable insights into the three-dimensional (3D) nature of exoplanets. Transmission spectroscopy is the most widely used method for characterizing transiting temperate exoplanet's atmospheres,…
In an effort to transcend the limitations of differential imaging of exoplanets in the era of extremely large telescopes (ELTs), the first paper in this series established a rigorous, fully polarimetric framework for determining the science…
Here we present additional photometry of targets observed as part of the Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 Test of Surfaces in the Outer Solar System. 12 targets were re-observed with the Wide Field Camera 3 in optical and NIR wavebands designed…
Transmission spectroscopy has been successfully used from both the ground and in space to characterise the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. This technique is challenging from the ground because ground-based spectrographs tend not to be…
High resolution imaging is an important tool for follow-up study of exoplanet candidates found via transit detection with the Kepler Mission. We discuss here HST imaging with the WFC3 of 23 stars that host particularly interesting Kepler…
It has long been understood that the light curve of a transiting planet constrains the density of its host star. That fact is routinely used to improve measurements of the stellar surface gravity and has been argued to be an independent…
The first step toward doing high-precision astrometry is the measurement of individual stars in individual images, a step that is fraught with dangers when the images are undersampled. The key to avoiding systematic positional error in…
We present a population study of 20 exoplanets, ranging from Neptune-like to inflated hot-Jupiter planets, observed during transit with the STIS and WFC3 instruments aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. To obtain spectral information from the…
We have studied the accuracy and reliability of the exposure time calculator (ETC) of the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with the objective of determining how well it represents actual…