Related papers: The Sensitivity of Eclipse Mapping to Planetary Ro…
The discovery of over 200 extrasolar planets with the radial velocity (RV) technique has revealed that many giant planets have large eccentricities, in striking contrast with most of the planets in the solar system and prior theories of…
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…
Basic atmospheric properties such as albedo and heat redistribution between day and nightside have been inferred for a number of planets using observations of secondary eclipses and thermal phase curves. Optical phase curves have not yet…
We present near infrared high-precision photometry for eight transiting hot Jupiters observed during their predicted secondary eclipses. Our observations were carried out using the staring mode of the WIRCam instrument on the…
We observed with the SOPHIE spectrograph (OHP, France) the transit of the HAT-P-6b exoplanet across its host star. The resulting stellar radial velocities display the Rossiter-McLaughlin anomaly and reveal a retrograde orbit: the planetary…
We show that a consistent fit to observed secondary eclipse data for several strongly irradiated transiting planets demands a temperature inversion (stratosphere) at altitude. Such a thermal inversion significantly influences the…
Context: Several studies have so far placed useful constraints on planetary atmospheric properties using transmission spectrsocopy, and in the case of HD209458b even the radial velocity of the planet during the transit event has been…
Detection of Jupiter mass companions to nearby solar type stars with precise radial velocity measurements is now routine, and Doppler surveys are moving towards lower velocity amplitudes. The detection of several Neptune-mass planets with…
In this paper, we investigate the detectability of radio emission from exoplanets, especially hot Jupiters, which are magnified by gravitational microlensing. Because hot Jupiters have orbital periods much shorter than the characteristic…
We analyze variations in the transit lightcurves of CoRoT-2b, a massive hot Jupiter orbiting a highly active G star. We use one transit lightcurve to eclipse-map a photospheric spot occulted by the planet. In this case study we determine…
In recent years, a number of observations have been made of the transits of 'Hot Jupiters', such as HD 189733b, which have been modelled to derive atmospheric structure and composition. As measurement techniques improve, the transit spectra…
We present a method that employs the secondary eclipse light curves of transiting extrasolar planets to probe the spatial variation of their thermal emission. This technique permits an observer to resolve the surface of the planet without…
The Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect is the distortion of stellar spectral lines that occurs during eclipses or transits, due to stellar rotation. We assess the future prospects for using the RM effect to measure the alignment of planetary…
Rotational mapping and glint are two proposed methods to directly detect liquid water on the surface of habitable exoplanets. However, false positives for both methods may prevent the unambiguous detection of exoplanet oceans. We use…
Thousands of exoplanets have been detected to date, and with future planned missions this tally will increase. Understanding the climate dependence on the planetary parameters is vital for the study of terrestrial exoplanet habitability.…
The combination of high-contrast imaging and medium to high spectral resolution spectroscopy offers new possibilities for the detection and characterization of exoplanets. The molecular mapping technique uses the difference between the…
Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…
Spotted stars in eclipsing binary systems allow us to gather significant information about the stellar surface inhomogeneities that is otherwise impossible from only photometric data. Starspots can be scanned using the eclipse (or transit)…
Rings around giant exoplanets (hereafter 'exorings') are still a missing planetary phenomenon among the vast number of discovered planets. Despite the fact there exist a large number of methods for identifying and characterizing these…
Secondary eclipse spectroscopy provides invaluable insights into the temperatures and compositions of exoplanetary atmospheres. We carry out a systematic temperature and abundance retrieval analysis of nine exoplanets (HD189733b, HD209458b,…