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New discoveries of transiting extrasolar planets are reported weekly. Ground based surveys as well as space borne observatories like CoRoT and Kepler are responsible for filling the statistical voids of planets on distant stellar systems. I…
We conduct a comprehensive search for transiting exomoons and exosatellites within 44 archival Spitzer light curves of 32 substellar worlds with estimated masses ranging between 3-30M$_{\rm Jup}$. This sample's median host mass is 16M$_{\rm…
We introduce and describe our newly developed code that simulates light curves and radial velocity curves for arbitrary transiting exoplanets with a satellite. The most important feature of the program is the calculation of radial velocity…
Transmission spectroscopy during planetary transits, which is based on the measurements of the variations of planet-to-star radius ratio as a function of wavelength, is a powerful technique to study the atmospheric properties of transiting…
Transmission spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets is a potential tool for habitability screening. Transiting planets are present-day "Rosetta Stones" for understanding extrasolar planets because they offer the possibility to characterize…
The probability that an exoplanet transits its host star is high for planets in close orbits, but drops off rapidly for increasing semimajor axes. This makes transit surveys for planets with large semimajor axes orbiting bright stars…
We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…
Main-sequence stars earlier than spectral type ~F6 or so are expected to rotate rapidly due to their radiative exteriors. This rapid rotation leads to an oblate stellar figure. It also induces the photosphere to be hotter (by up to several…
From simulations of transit observations, it is found that the detectability of extrasolar planets depends only on two parameters: The signal-to-noise ratio during a transit, and the number of data points observed during transits. All other…
From an observational standpoint, stellar activity poses a critical challenge to exoplanet science, as it inhibits the detection of planets and the precise measurement of their parameters. Radial velocity and transit searches revealed a…
For extrasolar planets with orbital periods, P>10 days, radial velocity surveys find non-circular orbital eccentricities are common, <e>~0.3. Future surveys for extrasolar planets using the transit technique will also have sensitivity to…
Stellar limb darkening is the observed variation in brightness of a star between its centre and edge (or limb) when viewed in the plane of the sky. Stellar brightness is maximal at the centre and then decreases radially and monotonically…
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…
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…
The properties of a transiting planet's host star are written in its transit light curve. The light curve can reveal the stellar density and the limb darkening profile in addition to the characteristics of the planet and its orbit. For…
Rapid planetary rotation can cause the equilibrium shape of a planet to be oblate. While planetary oblateness has mostly been probed by examining the subtle ingress and egress features in photometric transit light curves, we investigate the…
Here we present eight new candidates for exoplanets detected by the transit method at the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Photometric observations were performed with a 50-cm robotic telescope during…
Ground-based photometric surveys have led to the discovery of six transiting exoplanets, five of which were detected by the OGLE survey. The FLAMES multi-object spectrograph on the VLT has permitted a very efficient follow-up of the OGLE…
Transiting exoplanets provide access to data to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Long-period transiting planets allow insight into planetary environments similar to the Solar System where, in…
I calculate the physical properties of 32 transiting extrasolar planet and brown dwarf systems from existing photometric observations and measured spectroscopic parameters. The systems studied include fifteen observed by CoRoT, ten by…