Related papers: Optimising spectroscopic observations of transitin…
Ultra Fast Astronomy is a new frontier becoming enabled by improved detector technology allowing discovery of optical transients on millisecond to nanosecond time scales. These may reveal counterparts of energetic processes such as fast…
The discovery and subsequent study of optical counterparts to transient sources is crucial for their complete astrophysical understanding. Various gamma ray burst (GRB) detectors, and more notably the ground--based gravitational wave…
By observing the transits of exoplanets, one may determine many fundamental system parameters. I review current techniques and results for the parameters that can be measured with the greatest precision, specifically, the transit times, the…
Detecting Earth twins remains challenging because their shallow, long-period transits are difficult to distinguish from background noise. Motivated by the challenge, we developed Segmented-Polynomial-fitting Least Squares (SPLS), a new…
Space-based microlens parallax measurements are a powerful tool for understanding planet populations, especially their distribution throughout the Galaxy. However, if space-based observations of the microlensing events must be specifically…
To investigate the feasibility of ancillary target observations with ESA's Ariel mission, we compiled a list of potentially interesting young stars: FUors, systems harbouring extreme debris discs and a larger sample of young stellar objects…
The initial task that confronted extrasolar-planet transit surveys was to monitor enough stars with sufficient photometric precision and complete phase coverage. Numerous searches have been pursued over the last few years. Among these…
Extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) surveys usually require extensive observational baselines to confirm planetary candidates, making them resource-intensive. Traditionally, periodograms are used to identify promising candidate signals…
Spectral retrieval has long been a powerful tool for interpreting planetary remote sensing observations. Flexible, parameterised, agnostic models are coupled with inversion algorithms in order to infer atmospheric properties directly from…
The most significant challenge currently facing photometric surveys for transiting gas-giant planets is that of confusion with eclipsing binary systems that mimic the photometric signature. A simple way to reject most forms of these false…
Although atmospheric transmission spectroscopy of HD209458b with the Hubble Space Telescope has been very successful, attempts to detect its atmospheric absorption features using ground-based telescopes have so far been fruitless. Here we…
We present a proof of concept for a new algorithm which can be used to detect exoplanets in high contrast images. The algorithm properly combines mutliple observations acquired during different nights, taking into account the orbital motion…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will photometrically monitor approximately 1 billion stars for ten years. The resulting light curves can be used to detect transiting exoplanets. In particular, as demonstrated by Lund et al.…
We report the first extrasolar planet observations from the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), currently the world's largest, fully steerable, single-aperture optical telescope. We used the OSIRIS tunable filter imager on the GTC to…
The ongoing optical time-domain astronomy surveys are routinely reporting fifty transient candidates per night. Here, I investigate the demographics of astronomical transients and supernova classifications reported to the Transient Name…
To ensure robust constraints are placed on exoplanet atmospheric transmission spectra, future observations need to obtain high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) measurements assuming smaller amplitude molecular signatures than those of clear…
Population studies of Kepler's multi-planet systems have revealed a surprising degree of structure in their underlying architectures. Information from a detected transiting planet can be combined with a population model to make predictions…
We present the Cambridge Exoplanet Transit Recovery Algorithm (CETRA), a fast and sensitive transit detection algorithm, optimised for GPUs. CETRA separates the task into a search for transit signals across linear time space, followed by a…
Atmospheric characterization of exoplanets has traditionally relied on Low-Resolution Transmission Spectroscopy (LRTS), obtained from both space- and ground-based facilities, as well as on High-Resolution Transmission Spectroscopy (HRTS).…
Stellar activity and convection-related surface structures might cause bias in planet detection and characterization that use these transits. Surface convection simulations help to quantify the granulation signal. We used realistic…