Related papers: The Stellar Variability Noise Floor for Transiting…
The ability to make accurate determinations of planetary parameters is inextricably linked to measuring physical parameters of the host star, in particular the stellar radius. In this paper we fit the stellar spectral energy distributions…
Transit photometry is currently the most efficient and sensitive method for detecting extrasolar planets (exoplanets) and a large majority of confirmed exoplanets have been detected with this method. The substantial success of space-based…
Context. The characterization of exoplanets requires a good description of the host star. Stellar activity acts as a source of noise which can alter planet radii as derived from the transit depth or atmospheric characterization. Aims. Here,…
We present analytic estimates of the fractional uncertainties on the mass, radius, surface gravity, and density of a transiting planet, using only empirical or semi-empirical measurements. We first express these parameters in terms of…
It is well-known that the light curve of a transiting planet contains information about the planet's orbital period and size relative to the host star. More recently, it has been demonstrated that a tight constraint on an individual…
Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…
Detections of transiting planets from the upcoming PLATO mission are expected to face significant contamination from contaminating eclipsing binaries, resulting in false positives. To counter this, a ground-based programme to acquire…
Oscillations of the Sun have been used to understand its interior structure. The extension of similar studies to more distant stars has raised many difficulties despite the strong efforts of the international community over the past…
The ultra-precise photometric space satellite MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of STars) will provide the first opportunity to measure the albedos and scattered light curves from known short-period extrasolar planets. Due to the…
Atmospheric scintillation caused by optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere can be the dominant source of noise in ground-based photometric observations of bright targets, which is a particular concern for ground-based exoplanet…
Asymmetric features in exoplanet transit light curves are often interpreted as a gravity darkening effect especially if there is spectroscopic evidence of a spin-orbit misalignment. Since other processes can also lead to light curve…
We re-visit the principles of transmission spectroscopy for transiting extrasolar planets, focusing on the overlap between the planetary spectrum and the illuminating stellar spectrum. Virtually all current models of exoplanetary…
A large fraction of cool, low-mass stars exhibit brightness fluctuations that arise from a combination of convective granulation, acoustic oscillations, magnetic activity, and stellar rotation. Much of the short-timescale variability takes…
Stellar photometric variability and instrumental effects, like cosmic ray hits, data discontinuities, data leaks, instrument aging etc. cause difficulties in the characterization of exoplanets and have an impact on the accuracy and…
Stellar variability due to magnetic activity and flows at different spatial scales strongly impacts radial velocities. This variability is seen as oscillations, granulation, supergranulation, and meridional flows. The effect of this latter…
We present a comparison of two methods of fitting solar-like variability to increase the efficiency of detection of Earth-like planetary transits across the disk of a Sun-like star. One of them is the harmonic fitting method that coupled…
Time-series transit photometry from the Kepler space telescope has allowed for the discovery of thousands of exoplanets. We explore the potential of yet improved future missions such as PLATO 2.0 in detecting solar system analogues. We use…
Knowledge of an exoplanet's oblateness and obliquity would give clues about its formation and internal structure. In principle, a light curve of a transiting planet bears information about the planet's shape, but previous work has shown…
One of the main endeavors of the field of exoplanetary sciences is the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres on a population level. The current method of choice to accomplish this task is transmission spectroscopy, where the apparent…
Intrinsic stellar variability can hinder the detection of shallow transits, particularly in space-based data. Therefore, this variability has to be filtered out before running the transit search. Unfortunately, filtering out the low…