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We examine the ability of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to detect and improve our understanding of planetary systems in the Kepler field. By modeling the expected transits of all confirmed and candidate planets detected…

The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a dedicated facility for directly imaging and spectroscopically characterizing extrasolar planets. It combines a very high-order adaptive optics system, a diffraction-suppressing coronagraph, and an…

TESS is expected to discover dozens of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting M dwarfs whose atmospheres could be followed up with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Currently, the TRAPPIST-1 system serves as a benchmark to determine…

Understanding planetary habitability requires a comparative approach that explores the divergent evolutionary outcomes of Earth and Venus. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be uniquely positioned to conduct a statistical and…

The next generation ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) present incredible opportunities to discover and characterize diverse planetary systems, even potentially habitable worlds. Adaptive-optics assisted thermal-IR (3-14 micron)…

In the past few years, the study of exoplanets has evolved from being pure discovery, then being more exploratory in nature and finally becoming very quantitative. In particular, transmission spectroscopy now allows the study of…

Eclipsing planetary systems give us an important window on extrasolar planet atmospheres. By measuring the depth of the secondary eclipse, when the planet moves behind the star, we can estimate the strength of the thermal emission from the…

Atmospheric characterisation of temperate, rocky planets is the holy grail of exoplanet studies. These worlds are at the limits of our capabilities with current instrumentation in transmission spectroscopy and challenge our state-of-the-art…

Photometry of short-period planetary systems allows astronomers to monitor exoplanets, their host stars, and their mutual interactions. In addition to the transits of a planet in front of its star and the eclipses of the planet by its star,…

Habitable planets are often defined as terrestrial worlds capable of maintaining surface liquid water. As a result, atmospheric water vapor can be a critical indicator of habitability. Thus, habitability-themed exoplanet investigations…

The Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is a dedicated photometric surveying facility being built jointly by the University of Science and Technology of China and the Purple Mountain Observatory. It is equipped with a 2.5-meter diameter…

Most of our knowledge of planets orbiting nearby stars comes from Doppler surveys. For spaced-based, high-contrast imaging missions, nearby stars with Doppler-discovered planets are attractive targets. The known orbits tell imaging missions…

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 2 (EUSO-SPB2), successfully launched from Wanaka, New Zealand on May 13, 2022, is a precursor for a space-based astroparticle observatory such as the Probe Of Extreme…

Context. Interest in the use of the Chajnantor area for millimeter and submillimeter astronomy is increasing because of its excellent atmospheric conditions. Knowing the general site annual variability in precipitable water vapor (PWV) can…

Earth-sized exoplanets that transit nearby, late spectral type red dwarfs will be prime targets for atmospheric characterization in the coming decade. Such systems, however, are difficult to find via wide-field transit surveys like Kepler…

With the example of Proxima Centauri we discuss the feasibility of detecting terrestrial planets (1 to a few M_Earth) using the high precision radial velocity (RV) technique. If a very high RV precision for M stars is achieved even planets…

The precision of radial velocity (RV) measurements to detect indirectly planetary companions of nearby stars has improved to enable the discovery of extrasolar planets in the Neptune and Super-Earth mass range. Discoveries of Earth-like…

PicSat is a nanosatellite developed to observe the transit of the giant planet beta Pictoris b, expected in late 2017. Its science objectives are: the observation of the transit of the giant planet's Hill sphere, the detection of exocomets…

We present the 3.5m SPICA space telescope, a proposed Japanese-led JAXA-ESA mission scheduled for launch around 2017. The actively cooled (<5 K), single aperture telescope and monolithic mirror will operate from ~3.5 to ~210 um and will…

Ground-based astronomical observations may be limited by telluric water vapor absorption, which is highly variable in time and significantly complicates both spectroscopy and photometry in the near-infrared (NIR). To achieve the sensitivity…