Related papers: Exoplanet Cartography using Convolutional Neural N…
Unmixing the disk-integrated spectra of exoplanets provides hints about heterogeneous surfaces that we cannot directly resolve in the foreseeable future. It is particularly important for terrestrial planets with diverse surface compositions…
New observational facilities are becoming increasingly capable of observing reflected light from transiting and directly imaged extrasolar planets. In this study, we provide an analytic framework to interpret observed phase curves,…
The direct detection of exoplanets has been the subject of intensive research in the recent years. Data obtained with future high-contrast imaging instruments optimized for giant planets direct detection are strongly limited by the speckle…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets more than 20 years ago, there has been an increasing need for photometric and spectroscopic models to characterize these systems. While imaging has been used extensively for Solar System bodies…
Can multicellular life be distinguished from single cellular life on an exoplanet? We hypothesize that abundant upright photosynthetic multicellular life (trees) will cast shadows at high sun angles that will distinguish them from single…
Inverse techniques are used to extract information about an exoplanet's atmosphere. These techniques are prone to biased results if the appropriate forward model is not used. One assumption used in a forward model is to assume that the…
Advances in remote sensing technologies have made it possible to use high-resolution visual data for weather observation and forecasting tasks. We propose the use of multi-layer neural networks for understanding complex atmospheric dynamics…
We explored two aspects of the problem of characterizing cool extrasolar giant planets in scattered optical light with a space based coronagraph. First, for a number of the known radial velocity (RV) giants we computed traditional forward…
With over 1,000,000 images from more than 10,000 exposures using state-of-the-art high-contrast imagers (e.g., Gemini Planet Imager, VLT/SPHERE) in the search for exoplanets, can artificial intelligence (AI) serve as a transformative tool…
The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are currently engaged in an unprecedented era of discovery as recent missions have revealed thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars. While the Kepler Space Telescope mission has enabled most of…
The theory of remote sensing shows that observing a planet at multiple phase angles ($\alpha$) is a powerful strategy to characterize its atmosphere. Here, we analyse how the information contained in reflected-starlight spectra of…
In the era of photometry with space-based telescopes, such as CHEOPS (CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite), JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars), and ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing…
The most successful method used so far to search for extrasolar planets is the radial velocity technique, where periodical shifts on the measured emission from a star provide evidence for an orbiting planet. This method has been used on…
Circumstellar disks play a key role in the understanding of stellar systems. Direct imaging of such extended structures is a challenging task. Current post-processing techniques, first tailored for exoplanets imaging, tend to produce…
Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while…
Although many methods of detecting extra-solar planets have been proposed and successful implementation of some of these methods enabled a rapidly increasing number of exoplanet detections, little has been discussed about the method of…
All life on Earth needs water. NASA's quest to follow the water links water to the search for life in the cosmos. Telescopes like JWST and mission concepts like HabEx, LUVOIR and Origins are designed to characterise rocky exoplanets…
Since the first microlensing planet discovery in 2003, more than 200 planets have been detected with gravitational microlensing, in addition to several free-floating planet and black hole candidates. In this chapter the microlensing theory…
Accurately and rapidly classifying exoplanet candidates from transit surveys is a goal of growing importance as the data rates from space-based survey missions increases. This is especially true for NASA's TESS mission which generates…
Boulders form from a variety of geological processes, which their size, shape, and orientation may help us better understand. Furthermore, they represent potential hazards to spacecraft landing that need to be characterized. However,…