Related papers: TEPCat: The Transiting Extrasolar Planet Catalogue
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
One of the most exciting developments in the field of exoplanets has been the progression from 'stamp-collecting' to demography, from discovery to characterisation, from exoplanets to comparative exoplanetology. There is an exhilaration…
Among other things, studies of the formation and evolution of planetary systems currently draw on two important observational resources: the precise characterization available for planets that transit their parent stars and the frequency…
The transit method, during which a planet's presence is inferred by measuring the reduction in flux as it passes in front of its parent star, is a highly successful exoplanet detection and characterization technique. During transit, the…
Detailed characterization of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere provides the best hope for distinguishing the makeup of its outer layers, and the only hope for understanding the interplay between initial composition, chemistry, dynamics &…
I present a review of observational efforts to study known extrasolar planets by methods that are complementary to the radial velocity technique. I describe the current state of attempts to detect and characterize such planets by…
We present a database of well determined orbital parameters of exoplanets. This database comprises spectroscopic orbital elements measured for 427 planets orbiting 363 stars from radial velocity and transit measurements as reported in the…
Over 300 extrasolar planets have been found since 1992, showing that planetary systems are common and exhibit an outstanding variety of characteristics. As the number of detections grows and as models of planet formation progress to account…
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…
With 40 or more transiting exoplanets now known, the time is ripe to seek patterns and correlations among their observed properties, which may give important insights into planet formation, structure, and evolution. This task is made…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
The era of exoplanet characterization is upon us. For a subset of exoplanets -- the transiting planets -- physical properties can be measured, including mass, radius, and atmosphere characteristics. Indeed, measuring the atmospheres of a…
The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…
Detached eclipsing binary star systems are our primary source of measured physical properties of normal stars. I introduce DEBCat: a catalogue of detached eclipsing binaries with mass and radius measurements to the 2% precision necessary to…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…
The probability of the detection of Earth-like exoplanets may increase in the near future after the launch of the space missions using the transit photometry as observation method. By using this technique only the semi-major axis of the…
The known extrasolar planets exhibit many interesting and surprising features--extremely short-period orbits, high-eccentricity orbits, mean-motion and secular resonances, etc.--and have dramatically expanded our appreciation of the…
As the number of detected extrasolar planets increases, exoplanet databases become a valuable resource, confirming some details about planetary formation, but also challenging our theories with new unexpected properties.
In the near future there will be launched space missions (e.g. COROT, KEPLER), designed to detect Earth-like extrasolar planets. The orbital elements of these (still hypothetic) planets will contain some uncertainties, that can only be…