Related papers: Design Considerations for a Ground-Based Search fo…
The primary difficulty with using transits to discover extrasolar planets is the low probability a planet has of transiting its parent star. One way of overcoming this difficulty is to search for transits in dense stellar fields, such as…
The small sizes of low mass stars in principle provide an opportunity to find Earth-like planets and "super-Earths" in habitable zones via transits. Large area synoptic surveys like Pan-STARRS and LSST will observe large numbers of low mass…
We describe the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), which is a ground-based project searching for transiting exoplanets orbiting bright stars. NGTS builds on the legacy of previous surveys, most notably WASP, and is designed to achieve…
The motivation, techniques and performance of the ground-based photometric follow-up of transit detections by the CoRoT space mission are presented. Its principal raison d'\^{e}tre arises from the much higher spatial resolution of common…
High-precision eclipse spectrophotometry of transiting terrestrial exoplanets represents a promising path for the first atmospheric characterizations of habitable worlds and the search for life outside our solar system. The detection of…
We investigate the detectability of atmospheric spectral features of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) around M dwarfs with the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We use a coupled 1D climate-chemistry-model to simulate…
We develop a method for predicting the yield of transiting planets from a photometric survey given the parameters of the survey (nights observed, bandpass, exposure time, telescope aperture, locations of the target fields, observational…
(Abridged) We discuss the design considerations of the EXPLORE (EXtra-solar PLanet Occultation REsearch) project, a series of transiting planet searches using 4-m-class telescopes to continuously monitor a single field of stars in the…
The WFCAM Transit Survey (WTS) is a near-infrared transit survey running on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), designed to discover planets around M dwarfs. The WTS acts as a poor-seeing backup programme for the telescope, and…
In our solar system massive outer planets dominate in terms of both mass and angular momentum, but few such planets are among the more than 4000 currently confirmed exoplanets, and none of these have accurately determined densities. Here I…
(Abridged) Aims: Systematic surveys to search for exoplanets have been mostly dedicated to solar-type stars sofar. We developed in 2004 a method to extend such searches to earlier A-F type dwarfs and started spectroscopic surveys to search…
The detection of transits is an efficient technique to uncover faint companions around stars. The full characterisation of the companions (M-type stars, brown dwarfs or exoplanets) requires high-resolution spectroscopy to measure properly…
Of the approximately 350 extrasolar planets currently known, of order 10% orbit evolved stars with radii R >~ 2.5 R_sun. These planets are of particular interest because they tend to orbit more massive hosts, and have been subjected to…
One of the main scientific drivers of the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is the search for brown dwarfs and extrasolar superplanets. We discuss observational strategies for identification of these objects, and conclude that an…
We describe the Perkins INfrared Exosatellite Survey (PINES), a near-infrared photometric search for short-period transiting planets and moons around a sample of 393 spectroscopically confirmed L- and T-type dwarfs. PINES is performed with…
Transit and radial velocity searches are two techniques for identifying nearby extrasolar planets to Earth that transit bright stars. Identifying a robust sample of these exoplanets around bright stars for detailed atmospheric…
Context. Hot subdwarfs, which are hot and small He-burning objects, are ideal targets for exploring the evolution of planetary systems after the red giant branch (RGB). Thus far, no planets have been confirmed around them, and no systematic…
In light of the growing interest in searching for low mass, rocky planets, we investigate the impact of starspots on radial velocity searches for earth-mass planets in orbit about M dwarf stars. Since new surveys targeting M dwarfs will…
We report the results of a globally coordinated photometric campaign to search for transits by the P ~ 30 d and P ~ 60 d outer planets of the 3-planet system orbiting the nearby M-dwarf Gl 876. These two planets experience strong mutual…
We present a new observational campaign, DWARF, aimed at detection of circumbinary extrasolar planets using the timing of the minima of low-mass eclipsing binaries. The observations will be performed within an extensive network of…