Related papers: A targeted, parallax-based search for Planet Nine
Recent ground and space-based observations show that stars with multiple planets are common in the galaxy. Most of these observational methods are biased toward detecting large planets near to their host stars. Because of these…
The presence of an unseen `Planet 9' on the outskirts of the Solar system has been invoked to explain the unexpected clustering of the orbits of several Edgeworth--Kuiper Belt Objects. We use $N$-body simulations to investigate the…
Recent detections of extremely short-timescale microlensing events imply the existence of a large population of Earth- to Neptune-mass planets that appear to have no host stars. However, it is currently unknown whether these objects are…
Microlensing has proven to be a valuable tool to search for extrasolar planets of Jovian- to Super-Earth-mass planets at orbits of a few AU. Since planetary signals are of very short duration, an intense and continuous monitoring is…
Gravitational microlensing finds planets through their gravitational influence on the light coming from a more distant background star. The presence of the planet is then inferred from the tell-tale brightness variations of the background…
Microlensing is a proven extrasolar planet search method that has already yielded the detection of four exoplanets. These detections have changed our understanding of planet formation ``beyond the snowline'' by demonstrating that…
Imaging of planets is very difficult, due to the glare from their nearby, much brighter suns. Static and slowly-evolving aberrations are the limiting factors, even after application of adaptive optics. The residual speckle pattern is highly…
Vortex fiber nulling (VFN) is a method that may enable the detection and characterization of exoplanets at small angular separations (0.5-2 $\lambda/D$) with ground- and space-based telescopes. Since the field of view is within the inner…
The detection of low surface brightness galaxies beyond the Local Group poses significant observational challenges, yet these faint systems are fundamental to our understanding of dark matter, hierarchical galaxy formation, and cosmic…
The vast majority of known extrasolar planets orbit stars with a narrow range of masses (0.7-1.3 M_sun). Recent years have seen rapid growth in our knowledge about the properties of planetary systems with host stars significantly more…
Hundreds of gravitational microlensing events have now been detected towards the Galactic bulge, with many more to come. The detection of fine structure in these events has been theorized to be an excellent way to discover extra-solar…
The Kepler mission has discovered thousands of planet candidates. Currently, some of them have already been discarded; more than 200 have been confirmed by follow-up observations, and several hundreds have been validated. However, most of…
Among more than 200 extrasolar planet candidates discovered to date, there is no known planet orbiting around normal binary stars. In this paper, we demonstrate that microlensing is a technique that can detect such planets. Microlensing…
Microlensing is potentially sensitive to multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except Mercury, as well as to free floating planets. I review the landscape of microlensing planet searches, beginning with…
The trans-Neptunian region of the solar system exhibits an intricate dynamical structure, much of which can be explained by an instability-driven orbital history of the giant planets. However, the origins of a highly inclined, and in…
Most stellar remnants so far have been found in binary systems, where they interact with matter from their companions. Isolated neutron stars and black holes are difficult to find as they are dark, yet they are predicted to exist in our…
Are microlensing searches likely to discover planets that harbor life? Given our present state of knowledge, this is a difficult question to answer. We therefore begin by asking a more narrowly focused question: are conditions on planets…
Observations of the gravitational microlensing event MOA 2003-BLG-32/OGLE 2003-BLG-219 are presented for which the peak magnification was over 500, the highest yet reported. Continuous observations around the peak enabled a sensitive search…
A thorough search of the sky exposed at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory reveals no statistically significant excess of events in any small solid angle that would be indicative of a flux of neutral particles from a discrete source.…
Context. A recent observational census of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) has unveiled anomalous orbital structures. This has led to the hypothesis that an additional $\sim5-10~m_{\oplus}$ planet exists. This planet, known as Planet 9, occupies…