Related papers: Assessing Exoplanetary System Architectures with D…
Future direct imaging missions will primarily observe planets that have been previously detected, mostly via the radial velocity (RV) technique, to characterize planetary atmospheres. In the meantime, direct imaging may discover new planets…
Most planetary discoveries with the K2 and TESS missions are restricted to short periods because of the limited duration of observation. However, the re-observation of sky area allows for the detection of longer period planets. We describe…
Transit timing variations (TTVs) can provide useful information for systems observed by transit, as they allow us to put constraints on the masses and eccentricities of the observed planets, or even to constrain the existence of…
One of the great quests of astronomy is to obtain the spectrum of a terrestrial planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star, and the dominant challenge in doing so is to isolate the light of the planet from that of the star.…
Stellar activity due to different processes (magnetic activity, photospheric flows) affects the measurement of radial velocities (RV). Radial velocities have been widely used to detect exoplanets, although the stellar signal significantly…
Given the tendency of planets to form in multiples, and the observational evidence in support of the existence of potential planet-hosting stars in binaries or clusters, it is expected that extrasolar terrestrial planes are more likely to…
Among other things, studies of the formation and evolution of planetary systems currently draw on two important observational resources: the precise characterization available for planets that transit their parent stars and the frequency…
We develop an idealized dynamical model to predict the typical properties of outer extrasolar planetary systems, at radii beyond 5 AU. Our hypothesis is that dynamical evolution in outer planetary systems is controlled by a combination of…
Tidal interactions between short-period exoplanets and their host stars drive orbital decay and have likely led to engulfment of planets by their stars. Precise transit timing surveys, with baselines now spanning decades for some planets,…
The sensitivity of radial velocity (RV) surveys for exoplanet detection are extending to increasingly long orbital periods, where companions with periods of several years are now being regularly discovered. Companions with orbital periods…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will conduct a 2-year long wide-field survey searching for transiting planets around bright stars. Many TESS discoveries will be amenable to mass characterization via ground-based radial velocity…
Here we describe a story behind the discovery of Kepler-46, which was the first exoplanetary system detected and characterized from a method known as the transit timing variations (TTVs). The TTV method relies on the gravitational…
The search for life outside of the Solar System should not be restricted to exclusively planetary bodies; large moons of extrasolar planets may also be common habitable environments throughout the Galaxy. Extrasolar moons, or exomoons, may…
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…
From simulations of transit observations, it is found that the detectability of extrasolar planets depends only on two parameters: The signal-to-noise ratio during a transit, and the number of data points observed during transits. All other…
Transit timing variations (TTVs) provide a powerful means to detect and characterise additional bodies in known planetary systems, even when they do not transit their host stars. We investigate the dynamical architecture of the HD 332231…
(Abridged) The observed radial velocity (RV) eccentricity distribution for extrasolar planets in single-planet systems shows that a significant fraction of planets are eccentric ($e > 0.1$). Here we investigate the effects on an RV planet's…
In this paper, the detectability of habitable exomoons orbiting around giant planets in M-dwarf systems using Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) and Transit Timing Durations (TDVs) with Kepler-class photometry is investigated. Light curves of…
Unlike hot Jupiters or other gas giants, super-Earths are expected to have a wide variety of compositions, ranging from terrestrial bodies like our own to more gaseous planets like Neptune. Observations of transiting systems, which allow us…
Stellar variability impacts radial velocities at various timescales and therefore the detectability of exoplanets and the mass determination based on this technique. It is necessary to implement systematic studies, to delineate the current…