Related papers: Systematic search for long-term transit duration c…
Analyzing the available photometry from the Kepler satellite and other databases, we performed detailed light curve modeling of 10 eclipsing binary systems that were found to exhibit a periodic modulation of their orbital periods. All of…
Kepler-9, discovered by Holman et al. 2010, was the first system with multiple confirmed transiting planets and the first system to clearly show long-anticipated transit timing variations (TTVs). We review the historical circumstances…
We analyze a sample of multiple-exoplanet systems which contain at least 3 transiting planets detected by the Kepler mission ("Kepler multiples"). We use a generalized Titius-Bode relation to predict the periods of 228 additional planets in…
The transit technique is responsible for the majority of exoplanet discoveries to date. Characterizing these planets involves careful modeling of their transit profiles. A common technique involves expressing the transit duration using a…
The discovery of young (<800 Myr) transiting planets has provided a new avenue to explore how planets form and evolve over their lifetimes. Mass measurements for these planets would be invaluable, but radial velocity surveys of young…
I calculate the physical properties of 32 transiting extrasolar planet and brown dwarf systems from existing photometric observations and measured spectroscopic parameters. The systems studied include fifteen observed by CoRoT, ten by…
Short-period super-Earths and mini-Neptunes encircle more than $\sim50\%$ of Sun-like stars and are relatively amenable to direct observational characterization. Despite this, environments in which these planets accrete are difficult to…
A planet's orbital orientation relative to an observer's line of sight determines the chord length for a transiting planet, i.e., the projected distance a transiting planet travels across the stellar disc. For a given circular orbit, the…
The Sun-like star Kepler-160 (KOI-456) has been known to host two transiting planets, Kepler-160 b and c, of which planet c shows substantial transit-timing variations (TTVs). We used the archival Kepler photometry of Kepler-160 to search…
This paper considers whether the population of known transiting exoplanets provides evidence for additional outer planets on inclined orbits, due to the perturbing effect of such planets on the orbits of inner planets. As such, we develop a…
The observed amplitude of the rotational photometric modulation of a star with spots should depend on the inclination of its rotational axis relative to our line of sight. Therefore, the distribution of observed rotational amplitudes of a…
The Kepler mission has to date found almost 6,000 planetary transit-like signals, utilizing three years of data for over 170,000 stars at extremely high photometric precision. Due to its design, contamination from eclipsing binaries,…
The {\it Kepler} mission revealed a population of compact multiple-planet systems with orbital periods shorter than a year, and occasionally even shorter than a day. By analyzing a sample of 102 {\it Kepler} and {\it K2} multi-planet…
KOI-13.01, a planet-sized companion in an optical double star was announced as one of the 1235 Kepler planet candidates in February 2011. The transit curves show significant distortion that was stable over the ~130 days time-span of the…
Transit times around single stars can be described well by a linear ephemeris. However, transit times in circumbinary systems are influenced both by the gravitational perturbations and the orbital phase variations of the central binary…
In a search of proper motion catalogs for common proper motion stars in the field of the Kepler spacecraft I identified 93 likely binary systems. A comparison of their rotation periods is a test of the gyrochronology concept. To find their…
Few planetary systems have measured mutual inclinations, and even less are found to be non-coplanar. Observing the gravitational interactions between exoplanets is an effective tool to detect non-transiting companions to transiting planets.…
Kepler will monitor enough stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the Kepler photometry of such transits with precise radial velocity (RV)…
Currently, over forty transiting planets have been discovered by ground-based photometric surveys, and space-based missions like Kepler and CoRoT are expected to detect hundreds more. Follow-up photometric observations from the ground will…
Analysis of the transit timing variations (TTVs) of candidate pairs near mean-motion resonances (MMRs) is an effective method to confirm planets. Hitherto, 68 planets in 34 multi-planet systems have been confirmed via TTVs. We analyze the…