Related papers: Balancing Variety and Sample Size: Optimal Paramet…
(Abridged) We discuss the design considerations of the EXPLORE (EXtra-solar PLanet Occultation REsearch) project, a series of transiting planet searches using 4-m-class telescopes to continuously monitor a single field of stars in the…
The ARIEL Space Telescope will provide a large and diverse sample of exoplanet spectra, performing spectroscopic observations of about 1000 exoplanets in the wavelength range $0.5 \to 7.8 \; \mu m$. In this paper, we investigate the…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will devote significant observing time to the study of exoplanets. It will not be serviceable as was the Hubble Space Telescope, and therefore the spacecraft/instruments will have a relatively limited…
This paper considers the sample-efficiency of preference learning, which models and predicts human choices based on comparative judgments. The minimax optimal estimation error rate $\Theta(d/n)$ in classical estimation theory requires that…
The ExoClock project has been created with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the Ariel mission. It will achieve this by continuously monitoring and updating the ephemerides of Ariel candidates over an extended period, in order to…
The ESA-Ariel mission will include a tier dedicated to exoplanet phase curves corresponding to ~10% of the science time. We present here the current observing strategy for studying exoplanet phase curves with Ariel. We define science…
Optimally selecting a subset of targets from a larger catalog is a common problem in astronomy and cosmology. A specific example is the selection of targets from an imaging survey for multi-object spectrographic follow-up. We present a new…
We analyze photometric observations of stars, which experienced microlensing events at the considered time, in order to compare the efficiency of detecting exoplanets in observations performed at thirteen different telescopes and with…
Selecting high-quality and diverse training samples from extensive datasets plays a crucial role in reducing training overhead and enhancing the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, existing studies fall short in assessing…
Robotic telescopes present the opportunity for the sparse temporal placement of observations when period searching. We address the best way to place a limited number of observations to cover the dynamic range of frequencies required by an…
When observing the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using high-resolution spectroscopy, one aims to detect well-resolved spectral features with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) as is possible today with modern spectrographs. However,…
The ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Exoplanet Large-survey) mission concept is one of the three M4 mission candidates selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for a Phase A study, competing for a launch in 2026. ARIEL has been designed…
Detecting and characterising exoplanet atmospheres remains challenging because atmospheric signals can be comparable to residual noise and instrumental/astrophysical systematics. Spectral features span from a few ppm for small planets up to…
The study of extra-solar planets, or simply, exoplanets, planets outside our own Solar System, is fundamentally a grand quest to understand our place in the Universe. Discoveries in the last two decades have re-defined our understanding of…
Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, was adopted as the fourth medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme to be launched in 2029. During its 4-year mission, Ariel will study what exoplanets are…
We describe a general target selection algorithm that is applicable to any survey in which the number of available candidates is much larger than the number of objects to be observed. This routine aims to achieve a balance between a…
Astronomers are often confronted with funky populations and distributions of objects: brighter objects are more likely to be detected; targets are selected based on colour cuts; imperfect classification yields impure samples. Failing to…
In this work, we present Alfnoor, a dedicated tool optimised for population studies of exoplanet atmospheres. Alfnoor combines the latest version of the retrieval algorithm TauREx 3, with the instrument noise simulator ArielRad and enables…
The Ariel mission will characterise the chemical and thermal properties of the atmospheres of about a thousand exoplanets transiting their host star(s). The observation of such a large sample of planets will allow to deepen our…
As decarbonization agendas mature, macro-energy systems modelling studies have increasingly focused on enhanced decision support methods that move beyond least-cost modelling to improve consideration of additional objectives and tradeoffs.…