Related papers: The Stellar Variability Noise Floor for Transiting…
Increasingly precise space-based photometry uncovers higher-order effects in transits, eclipses and phase curves which can be used to characterize exoplanets in novel ways. The subtle signature induced by a rotationally deformed exoplanet…
ESA's PLATO mission aims the detection and characterization of terrestrial planets around solar-type stars as well as the study of host star properties. The noise-to-signal ratio (NSR) is the main performance parameter of the PLATO…
Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets is a tool to characterize rocky planets and explore their habitability. Using the Earth itself as a proxy, we model the atmospheric cross section as a function of wavelength, and show the effect of…
Finding low-mass planets around solar-type stars requires to understand the physical variability of the host star, which greatly exceeds the planet-induced radial-velocity modulation. Different solar photospheric absorption lines have…
The Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect is the distortion of stellar spectral lines that occurs during eclipses or transits, due to stellar rotation. We assess the future prospects for using the RM effect to measure the alignment of planetary…
The measurement of an exoplanet's oblateness and obliquity provides insights into the planet's internal structure and formation history. Previous work using small differences in the shape of the transit light curve has been moderately…
We assess broadband color filters for the two fast cameras on the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations (PLATO) of stars space mission with respect to exoplanetary atmospheric characterization. We focus on Ultra Hot Jupiters and Hot Jupiters…
Precise physical properties of the known transiting exoplanets are essential for their precise atmospheric characterization using modern and upcoming instruments. Leveraging the large volume of high SNR photometric follow-up data from TESS,…
Owing to technological advances, the number of exoplanets discovered has risen dramatically in the last few years. However, when trying to observe Earth analogs, it is often difficult to test the veracity of detection. We have developed a…
We present I and B photometry of five distinct transits of the exoplanet OGLE-TR-10b. By modeling the light curves, we find the planetary radius to be R_P = 1.06 +/- 0.08 R_Jup and the stellar radius to be R_S = 1.10 +/- 0.07 R_sun. The…
The chromatic contamination that arises from photospheric heterogeneities e.g. spots and faculae on the host star presents a significant noise source for exoplanet transmission spectra. If this contamination is not corrected for, it can…
One of the persistent complications in searches for transiting exoplanets is the low percentage of the detected candidates that ultimately prove to be planets, which significantly increases the load on the telescopes used for the follow-up…
In the last years, the Observatory of Padova (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova) and the University of Padova have been involved massively in projects dedicated to the exoplanets search, both ground, and…
A planetary transit produces both a photometric signal and a spectroscopic signal. Precise observations of the transit light curve reveal the planetary radius and allow a search for timing anomalies caused by satellites or additional…
Stellar magnetic activity is a source of noise in the study of the transits of extrasolar planets. It induces flux variations which affect significantly the transit depth determination and the derivations of planetary and stellar…
Transmission spectroscopy probes exoplanet atmospheres via the wavelength dependence of transit depths, but stellar contamination from magnetic activity can significantly bias these measurements. Activity-induced changes in the chromatic…
Detecting and confirming terrestrial planets is incredibly difficult due to their tiny size and mass relative to Sun-like host stars. However, recent instrumental advancements are making the detection of Earth-like exoplanets…
Differential spectroscopy during exoplanet transits permits to reconstruct spectra of small stellar surface portions that successively become hidden behind the planet. The center-to-limb behavior of stellar line shapes, asymmetries and…
We present results of numerical simulations of flux and linear polarization variations in transiting exoplanetary systems, caused by the host star disk symmetry breaking. We consider different configurations of planetary transits depending…
Photometric stability is a key requirement for time-resolved spectroscopic observations of transiting extrasolar planets. In the context of the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory (EChO) mission design, we here present and investigate…