Related papers: Identifying interesting planetary systems for futu…
The era of exoplanet characterization is upon us. For a subset of exoplanets -- the transiting planets -- physical properties can be measured, including mass, radius, and atmosphere characteristics. Indeed, measuring the atmospheres of a…
Active small bodies in extrasolar systems, the extrasolar analogues of Solar System comets, provide insights into the orbital evolution and physical processes shaping planetary systems. Since the discovery of exocomets around $\beta$…
More than a thousand exoplanets have been discovered over the last decade. Perhaps more excitingly, probing their atmospheres has become possible. With current data we have glimpsed the diversity of exoplanet atmospheres that will be…
Planets that reside close-in to their host star are subject to intense high-energy irradiation. Extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray radiation (together, XUV) is thought to drive mass loss from planets with volatile envelopes. We present…
Detecting and characterising exoplanet atmospheres remains challenging because atmospheric signals can be comparable to residual noise and instrumental/astrophysical systematics. Spectral features span from a few ppm for small planets up to…
When the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) was conceived and its first science cases defined, exoplanets had not been detected. Later studies, however, showed that optical and near-infrared photometric and…
The majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of…
Exoplanets can be detected with various observational techniques. Among them, radial velocity (RV) has the key advantages of revealing the architecture of planetary systems and measuring planetary mass and orbital eccentricities. RV…
The classical picture of our Solar System being the archetypal outcome of planet formation has been rendered obsolete by the astonishing diversity of extrasolar-system architectures. From rare hot-Jupiters to abundant super-Earths and…
The ancestor philosophers' dream of thousands of new worlds is finally realised: about 3500 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the neighborhood of our Sun. Most of them are very different from those we used to know in our Solar…
Precise exoplanet characterization requires precise classification of exoplanet host stars. The masses of host stars are commonly estimated by comparing their spectra to those predicted by stellar evolution models. However,…
Direct imaging and spectroscopy is the likely means by which we will someday identify, confirm, and characterize an Earth-like planet around a nearby Sun-like star. This Chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding…
The ability to make accurate determinations of planetary parameters is inextricably linked to measuring physical parameters of the host star, in particular the stellar radius. In this paper we fit the stellar spectral energy distributions…
The exoplanet revolution is well underway. The last decade has seen order-of-magnitude increases in the number of known planets beyond the Solar system. Detailed characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres provide the best means for…
At the dawn of the first discovery of exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars in the mid-1990s, few believed that observations of exoplanet atmospheres would ever be possible. After the 2002 Hubble Space Telescope detection of a transiting…
The discovery of exoplanets has both focused and expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The consideration of Earth as an exoplanet, the knowledge of the orbital parameters of individual exoplanets, and our new understanding…
Transmission spectroscopy is among the most fruitful techniques to infer the main opacity sources present in the upper atmosphere of a transiting planet and to constrain the composition of the thermosphere and of the unbound exosphere. Not…
The EXTraS project (Exploring the X-ray Transient and variable Sky) will characterise the temporal behaviour of the largest ever sample of objects in the soft X-ray range (0.1-12 keV) with a complex, systematic and consistent analysis of…
The search for extrasolar rocky planets has already found the first transiting rocky super-Earth, Corot 7b, with a surface temperature that allows for magma oceans. Here we ask if we could distinguish rocky planets with recent major…
Stars over a wide range of masses and evolutionary stages are nowadays known to emit X-rays. This X-ray emission is a unique probe of the most energetic phenomena occurring in the circumstellar environment of these stars, and provides…