Related papers: Revised instellation patterns for close-in exoplan…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
We present a mathematical method to statistically decouple the effects of unknown inclination angles on the mass distribution of exoplanets that have been discovered using radial-velocity techniques. The method is based on the distribution…
The fine precision of photometric data available from missions like Kepler provide researchers with the ability to measure changes in light on the order of tens of parts per million (ppm). This level of precision allows researchers to…
We derive the Legendre series expansion for the insolation distribution on rapidly rotating planets as a function of sine of the latitude and the planet's obliquity. We give an explicit formula for the coefficients of this series as it…
Exoplanet transmission spectra, which measure the absorption of light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit, are most often assessed globally, resulting in a single spectrum per planetary atmosphere. However, the inherent…
Planet Planet scattering is a leading dynamical mechanism invoked to explain the present orbital distribution of exoplanets. Many stars belong to binary systems, therefore it is important to understand how this mechanism works in presence…
Interstellar absorption in the galactic plane is highly variable from one direction to another. In this paper colour excesses and distances from a new open cluster sample are used to investigate the spatial distribution of the interstellar…
In this paper, we use a sixth order Legendre series expansion to approximate the mean annual insolation by latitude of a planet with obliquity angle $\beta$, leading to faster computations with little loss in the accuracy of results. We…
The irradiance received by a spherical body or a planet close to a spherically symmetric source does not follow the point-sized source approximation and the inverse-square variation of irradiation if spherical symmetry is broken. In the…
Exoplanets that orbit close to their host stars are much more highly irradiated than their Solar System counterparts. Understanding the thermal structures and appearances of these planets requires investigating how their atmospheres respond…
Context. As a new growing field, exocartography aims to map the surface features of exoplanets that are beyond the resolution of traditional observing techniques. While photometric approaches have been discussed extensively, polarimetry has…
It is possible to learn a great deal about exoplanet atmospheres even when we cannot spatially resolve the planets from their host stars. In this chapter, we overview the basic techniques used to characterize transiting exoplanets -…
We describe statistical methods for measuring the exoplanet multiplicity function - the fraction of host stars containing a given number of planets - from transit and radial-velocity surveys. The analysis is based on the approximation of…
A transiting planet eclipses part of the rotating stellar surface, thereby producing an anomalous Doppler shift of the stellar spectrum. Here I review how this "Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect" can be used to characterize exoplanetary systems.…
Observations of stellar surfaces - except for the Sun - are hampered by their tiny angular extent, while observed spectral lines are smeared by averaging over the stellar surface, and by stellar rotation. Exoplanet transits can be used to…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
The rotation of a star and the revolutions of its planets are not necessarily aligned. This article reviews the measurement techniques, key findings, and theoretical interpretations related to the obliquities (spin-orbit angles) of…
Orbital variation in reflected starlight from exoplanets could eventually be used to detect surface oceans. Exoplanets with rough surfaces, or dominated by atmospheric Rayleigh scattering, should reach peak brightness in full phase, orbital…
Transmission spectra contain a wealth of information about the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. However, large thermal and chemical gradients along the line of sight can lead to biased inferences in atmospheric retrievals. In order to…
The next generation of exoplanet space photometry missions proposed by both NASA and ESA promise to discover small transiting planets around the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars. The physical and rotational properties of these…