Related papers: Modeling the Solar System I: Characterization Limi…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes…
Duration and period of transits in extrasolar planetary systems can exhibit long-term variations for a variety of reasons. Here we investigate how systemic proper motion, which steadily re-orients planetary orbit with respect to our line of…
(Abridged) In planetary systems with two or more giant planets, dynamical instabilities can lead to collisions or ejections through strong planet--planet scattering. Previous studies for simple initial configurations with two equal-mass…
We report on the orbital architectures of Kepler systems having multiple planet candidates identified in the analysis of data from the first six quarters of Kepler data and reported by Batalha et al. (2013). These data show 899 transiting…
This paper explores the stability of an Earth-like planet orbiting a solar mass star in the presence of an outer-lying intermediate mass companion. The overall goal is to estimate the fraction of binary systems that allow Earth-like planets…
In close eclipsing binaries, measurements of the variations in binary's eclipse timing may be used to infer information about the existence of circumbinary objects. To determine the possibility of the detection of such variations with CoRoT…
We propose a scientific program to complete a census of planets, characterizing their masses, orbital properties, and dynamical histories using continued observations of the Kepler field of view with the Kepler spacecraft in a two reaction…
In the coming years, it is likely that the first potentially Earth-like planets will be discovered orbiting other stars. Once found, the characterisation of those planets will play a vital role in determining which will be chosen as the…
Today's most detailed characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is accessible via transit spectroscopy (TS). Detecting transiting exoplanets only yields their size, and it is thus standard to measure a planet's mass before moving towards…
Gravitational interactions between planets in transiting exoplanetary systems lead to variations in the times of transit that are diagnostic of the planetary masses and the dynamical state of the system. Here we show that synodic "chopping"…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…
The stellar obliquity of a transiting planetary system can be constrained by combining measurements of the star's rotation period, radius, and projected rotational velocity. Here we present a hierarchical Bayesian technique for recovering…
A wealth of Earth-sized exoplanets will be discovered in the coming years, proving a large pool of candidates from which the targets for the search for life beyond the Solar system will be chosen. The target selection process will require…
Recent work has shown that the planets in the $Kepler$ Mission's population of multi-transiting systems show surprising uniformity in both mass and radius. In this brief note, I show that this intra-system mass uniformity extends to…
Characterization of transiting planets with transit timing variations (TTVs) requires understanding how to translate the observed TTVs into masses and orbital elements of the planets. This can be challenging in multi-planet transiting…
Most detected transiting planets have orbits which would fit within the one of Mercury, exposing them to intense stellar irradiation and interactions that significantly alter their properties. In contrast, colder planets with longer orbital…
The perturbation caused by planet-moon binarity on the time-of-arrival signal of a pulsar with an orbiting planet is derived for the case in which the orbits of the moon and the planet-moon barycenter are both circular and coplanar. The…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
Ground-based searches for transiting Jupiter-sized planets have so far produced few detections of planets, but many of stellar systems with eclipse depths, durations, and orbital periods that resemble those expected from planets. I show…
Many features of the outer solar system are replicated in numerical simulations if the giant planets undergo an orbital instability that ejects one or more ice giants. During this instability, Jupiter and Saturn's orbits diverge, crossing…