Related papers: Earth-like planets hosting systems: Architecture a…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
A classification system is presented for characterizing the composition of planetary bodies. From mass-radius and mass-density relationships, planets may be broadly grouped into five composition classes identified as: Gas Giant, Rock-Ice…
Terrestrial exoplanets in habitable zones are ubiquitous. It is, however, unknown which have Earth-like or Venus-like climates. Distinguishing different planet-types is crucial for determining whether a planet could be habitable. We…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
A key component of characterizing multi-planet exosystems is testing the orbital stability based on the observed properties. Such characterization not only tests the validity of how observations are interpreted but can also place additional…
Microlensing offers a unique opportunity to probe exoplanets that are temperate and beyond the snow line, as small as Jovian satellites, at extragalactic distance, and even free floating exoplanets, regimes where the sensitivity of other…
Planetary satellites are an integral part of the heirarchy of planetary systems. Here we make two predictions concerning their formation. First, primordial satellites, which have an array of distinguishing characteristics, form only around…
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…
Multi-planet system architectures are frequently used to constrain possible formation and evolutionary pathways of observed exoplanets. Therefore, understanding the predictive and descriptive power of empirical models of these systems is…
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…
The classical picture of our Solar System being the archetypal outcome of planet formation has been rendered obsolete by the astonishing diversity of extrasolar-system architectures. From rare hot-Jupiters to abundant super-Earths and…
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…
We report on the results of an 8-year survey carried out at the La Silla Observatory with the HARPS spectrograph to detect and characterize planets in the super-Earth and Neptune mass regime. The size of our star sample and the precision…
The difference in formation process between binary stars and planetary systems is reflected in their composition as well as their orbital architecture, particularly orbital eccentricity as a function of orbital period. It is suggested here…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
Study of exoplanets is one of the main goals of present research in planetary sciences and astrobiology. Analysis of huge planetary data from space missions such as CoRoT and Kepler is directed ultimately at finding a planet similar to…
The Solar System hosts the most studied and best understood major and minor planetary bodies - and the only extraterrestrial bodies to have been visited by spacecraft. The Solar System therefore provides important constraints on both the…
Microlensing is one of the most powerful methods that can detect extrasolar planets and a future space-based survey with a high monitoring frequency is proposed to detect a large sample of Earth-mass planets. In this paper, we examine the…
I present an homogeneous determination of the physical properties of 14 transiting extrasolar planetary systems for which good data are available. The input quantities for each system are the results of the light curve analyses (Paper 1),…