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As astronomers, we are living an exciting time for what concerns the search for other worlds. Recent discoveries have already deeply impacted our vision of planetary formation and architectures. Future bio-signature discoveries will…
Exoplanets are typically thought to form in protoplanetary disks left over from protostellar disk of their newly formed host star. However, additional planetary formation and evolution routes may exist in old evolved binary systems. Here we…
We report rotation periods, variability characteristics, gyrochronological ages for ~950 of the Kepler Object of Interest host stars. We find a wide dispersion in the amplitude of the photometric variability as a function of rotation,…
Binary systems anchor many of the fundamental relations relied upon in asteroseismology. Masses and radii are rarely constrained better than when measured via orbital dynamics and eclipse depths. Pulsating binaries have much to offer. They…
The goal of the Ariel space mission is to observe a large and diversified population of transiting planets around a range of host star types to collect information on their atmospheric composition. The planetary bulk and atmospheric…
Transiting circumbinary planets discovered by Kepler provide unique insight into binary star and planet formation. Several features of this new found population, for example the apparent pile-up of planets near the innermost stable orbit,…
The habitability of the surface of any planet is determined by a complex evolution of its interior, surface, and atmosphere. The electromagnetic and particle radiation of stars drive thermal, chemical and physical alteration of planetary…
Over the last twenty years, the search for extrasolar planets revealed us the rich diversity of the outcomes of the formation and evolution of planetary systems. In order to fully understand how these extrasolar planets came to be, however,…
The knowledge of the ages of stars hosting exoplanets allows us to obtain an overview on the evolution of exoplanets and understand the mechanisms affecting their life. The measurement of the ages of stars in the Galaxy is usually affected…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
The diversity of planetary systems that have been discovered are revealing the plethora of possible architectures, providing insights into planet formation and evolution. They also increase our understanding of system parameters that may…
During these last decades, our knowledge of evolutionary and structural properties of stars of different mass and chemical composition is significantly improved. This result has been achieved as a consequence of our improved capability in…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…
Satellites of asteroids have been discovered in nearly every known small body population, and a remarkable aspect of the known satellites is the diversity of their properties. They tell a story of vast differences in formation and evolution…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
A habitable zone of a star is defined as a range of orbits within which a rocky planet can support liquid water on its surface. The most intriguing question driving the search for habitable planets is whether they host life. But is the age…
Context. The presence of a stellar companion can strongly influence the architecture and long-term stability of planetary systems. Motivated by the discovery of exoplanets exhibiting extremely high eccentricities (e >= 0.8) in systems with…
We develop a simple model of planetary formation, focusing our attention on those planets with masses less than 10 Earth masses and studying particularly the primordial spin parameters of planets resulting from the accretion of…
The rotation-mass-age relationship offers a promising avenue for measuring the ages of field stars, assuming the attendant uncertainties to this technique can be well characterized. We model stellar angular momentum evolution starting with…
The discovery of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun has accelerated over the past decade, and this trend will continue as new space- and ground-based observatories employ next-generation instrumentation to search the skies for…