Related papers: A regularisation technique to precisely infer limb…
Stars are uniform spheres, but only to first order. The way in which stellar rotation and magnetism break this symmetry places important observational constraints on stellar magnetic fields, and factors in the assessment of the impact of…
Future high precision photometric measurements of transiting extrasolar planets promise to tell us much about the nature of these systems. We examine how atmospheric lensing and (projected) planet oblateness/ellipticity modify transit light…
Detecting and confirming terrestrial planets is incredibly difficult due to their tiny size and mass relative to Sun-like host stars. However, recent instrumental advancements are making the detection of Earth-like exoplanets…
I derive the physical properties of 30 transiting extrasolar planetary systems using a homogeneous analysis of published data. The light curves are modelled with the JKTEBOP code, with attention paid to limb darkening and eccentricity. The…
In a line caustic crossing microlensing event, the caustic line moving across the surface of the source star provides a direct method to measure the integrated luminosity profile of the star. Combined with the enormous brightening at the…
We present the first exact analytical solutions for exoplanet transit light curves under arbitrary real power-law limb darkening, $I(\mu) = I_0\mu^\alpha$ with $\alpha > -2$, removing the two-decade restriction to integer-polynomial forms.…
Multiple parametric limb-darkening laws have been presented, and there are many available sources of theoretical limb-darkening coefficients (LDCs) calculated using stellar model atmospheres. The power-2 limb-darkening law allows a very…
We are witness to a great and increasing interest in internal structure, composition and evolution of exoplanets. However, direct measurements of exoplanetary mass and radius cannot be uniquely interpreted in terms of interior structure,…
Determining wavelength-dependent exoplanet radii measurements is an excellent way to probe the composition of exoplanet atmospheres. In light of this, Borsa et al. (2016) sought to develop a technique to obtain such measurements by…
The nearly continuous light curves with micromagnitude precision provided by the space mission Kepler are revolutionising our view of pulsating stars. They have revealed a vast sea of low-amplitude pulsation modes that were undetectable…
With manual searching processes, the rate at which scientists and astronomers discover exoplanets is slow because of inefficiencies that require an extensive time of laborious inspections. In fact, as of now there have been about only 5,000…
Stellar photometric variability and instrumental effects, like cosmic ray hits, data discontinuities, data leaks, instrument aging etc. cause difficulties in the characterization of exoplanets and have an impact on the accuracy and…
Spectral retrieval techniques are currently our best tool to interpret the observed exoplanet atmospheric data. Said techniques retrieve the optimal atmospheric components and parameters by identifying the best fit to an observed…
We describe a method for determining the limb polarization and limb darkening of stars in eclipsing binary systems, by inverting photometric and polarimetric light curves. Because of the ill-conditioning of the problem, we use the…
The mutual orbital alignment in multiple planetary systems is an important parameter for understanding their formation. There are a number of elaborate techniques to determine the alignment parameters using photometric or spectroscopic…
It has been demonstrated that the time variability of a star's brightness at different frequencies can be used to infer its surface gravity, radius, mass, and age. With large samples of light curves now available from Kepler and K2, and…
1D stellar evolution codes employ rudimentary treatments of turbulent convection. For stars with convective envelopes, this leads to systematic errors in the predicted oscillation frequencies needed for asteroseismology. One way of mending…
The recently approved NASA K2 mission has the potential to multiply by an order of magnitude the number of short-period transiting planets found by Kepler around bright and low-mass stars, and to revolutionise our understanding of stellar…
A planetary transit produces both a photometric signal and a spectroscopic signal. Precise observations of the transit light curve reveal the planetary radius and allow a search for timing anomalies caused by satellites or additional…
Context: Dynamical studies of irradiated circumstellar disks require an accurate treatment of radiation transport to, for example, properly determine cooling and fragmentation properties. The radiation transport algorithm should be as fast…