Related papers: Planet Eclipse Mapping with Long-Term Baseline Dri…
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…
Exoplanets that reside close to their host stars, and therefore receive substantial amounts of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation, are prone to suffer from strong atmospheric escape. This can lead to the creation of an envelope of escaping gas…
Identification of the main planet formation site is fundamental to understanding how planets form and migrate to the current locations. We consider the heavy-element content trend of observed exoplanets derived from improved measurements of…
Future telescopes will characterize rocky exoplanets in reflected light, revealing their albedo, which depends on surface, cloud, and atmospheric properties. Identifying these features is crucial for assessing habitability. We present…
Of all planet-finding techniques, microlensing is potentially the most sensitive to Earth-mass planets. However, microlensing lightcurves generically yield only the planet-star mass ratio: the mass itself is uncertain to a factor of a few.…
Atmospheric characterization of Earth-like exoplanets through reflected light spectroscopy is a key goal for upcoming direct imaging missions. A critical challenge in this endeavor is the accurate determination of planetary mass, which may…
One of the biggest challenges facing large transit surveys is the elimination of false-positives from the vast number of transit candidates. We investigate to what extent information from the lightcurves can identify blend scenarios and…
We present modeled flux and linear polarisation signals of starlight that is reflected by spatially unresolved, horizontally inhomogeneous planets and discuss the effects of including horizontal inhomogeneities on the flux and polarisation…
Light curves show the flux variation from the target star and its orbiting planets as a function of time. In addition to the transit features created by the planets, the flux also includes the reflected light component of each planet, which…
In an era when we are charting multiple planets per system, one might wonder the extent to which "missing" (or failing to detect) a planet can skew our interpretation of the system architecture. We address this question with a simple…
The current searches for microlensing events towards the galactic bulge can be used to detect planets around the lensing stars. Their effect is a short-term modulation on the smooth lightcurve produced by the main lensing star. Current and…
Kepler has detected numerous exoplanet transits by precise measurements of stellar light in a single visible-wavelength band. In addition to detection, the precise photometry provides phase curves of exoplanets, which can be used to study…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
Extended source effects can be seen in gravitational lensing events when sources cross critical lines. Those events probe the stellar intensity profile and could be used to measure limb darkening coefficients to test stellar model…
We review the state of the art in follow-up photometry for planetary transit searches. Three topics are discussed: (1) Photometric monitoring of planets discovered by radial velocity to detect possible transits (2) Follow-up photometry of…
Multi-band phase variations in principle allow us to infer the longitudinal temperature distributions of planets as a function of height in their atmospheres. For example, 3.6 micron emission originates from deeper layers of the atmosphere…
Future space telescopes will directly image extrasolar planets at visible wavelengths. Time-resolved reflected light from an exoplanet encodes information about atmospheric and surface inhomogeneities. Previous research has shown that the…
In the recent years, retrieval analysis of exoplanet atmospheres have been very successful, providing deep insights on the composition and the temperature structure of these worlds via the transit and eclipse methods. Analysis of spectral…
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…
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…