Related papers: The Sensitivity of Eclipse Mapping to Planetary Ro…
Planets with non-zero obliquity and/or orbital eccentricity experience seasonal variations of stellar irradiation at local latitudes. The extent of the atmospheric response can be crudely estimated by the ratio between the orbital timescale…
With the recent discoveries of hundreds of extrasolar planets, the search for planets like Earth and life in the universe, is quickly gaining momentum. In the future, large space observatories could directly detect the light scattered from…
Eclipse exoplanet spectroscopy has yielded detection of H_2O, CH_4, CO_2 and CO in the atmosphere of hot jupiters and neptunes. About 40 large terrestrial planets are announced or confirmed, two of which are transiting, and another deemed…
Relatively long-period nonsynchronized planets---such as warm Jupiters---potentially retain the primordial rotation, eccentricity, and obliquity that might encapsulate information on planetary climate and formation processes. To date, there…
Orbits of known extrasolar planets that are located outside the tidal circularization regions of their parent stars are often substantially eccentric. By contrast, planetary orbits in our Solar System are approximately circular, reflecting…
When a planet passes in front of a starspot during a transit of its host star, it causes a small upward blip in the light curve. Modelling the transit with the starspot allows the size, brightness and position of the spot to be measured. If…
We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
The probability of the detection of Earth-like exoplanets may increase in the near future after the launch of the space missions using the transit photometry as observation method. By using this technique only the semi-major axis of the…
The obliquity of a terrestrial planet is an important clue about its formation and critical to its climate. Previous studies using simulated photometry of Earth show that continuous observations over most of a planet's orbit can be inverted…
Secondary eclipse observations are a powerful way to investigate whether or not a rocky exoplanet hosts an atmosphere, as an atmospheric presence would transport heat to the nightside and render the dayside colder than anticipated. The…
Most detected transiting planets have orbits which would fit within the one of Mercury, exposing them to intense stellar irradiation and interactions that significantly alter their properties. In contrast, colder planets with longer orbital…
Improved photometric sensitivity from space-based telescopes have enabled the detection of phase variations for a small sample of hot Jupiters. However, exoplanets in highly eccentric orbits present unique opportunities to study the effects…
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.…
The field of exoplanetary science has diversified rapidly over recent years as the field has progressed from exoplanet detection to exoplanet characterization. For those planets known to transit, the primary transit and secondary eclipse…
Although conjunctions and oppositions frequently occur in planetary systems, eclipse-related phenomena are usually described from an Earth-centric perspective. Space missions to different parts of the Solar system, as well as the mounting…
The angle between the spin axis of the host star and the orbit of its planets (i.e., the stellar obliquity) is precious information about the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. Measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect…
The field of exoplanet atmospheric characterization is trending towards comparative studies involving many planetary systems, and using Bayesian hierarchical modelling is a natural next step. Here we demonstrate two use cases. We first use…
The phase or orbital light curves of extrasolar terrestrial planets in reflected or emitted light will contain information about their atmospheres and surfaces complementary to data obtained by other techniques such as spectrosopy. We show…
The Eclipse Mapping Method is an indirect imaging technique that transforms the shape of the eclipse light curve into a map of the surface brightness distribution of the occulted regions. Three decades of application of this technique to…