Related papers: Assessment of PLATO Science Performance
Exoplanetary science has reached a historic moment. The James Webb Space Telescope will be capable of probing the atmospheres of rocky planets, and perhaps even search for biologically produced gases. However this is contingent on…
We compare potential state-of-the-art experiments for detecting Earth-mass planets around main-sequence stars using radial velocities, transits, astrometry, and microlensing. For conventionally-discussed signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)…
During the last few years, considerable effort has been directed towards large-scale (>> $1 Billion US) missions to detect and characterize earth-like planets around nearby stars, such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (TPF-I)…
A stellar occultation by Pluto on 5 September 2019 yielded positive detections at two separate stations. Using an approach consistent with comparable studies, we derived a surface pressure of $11.478 \pm 0.55~\mathrm{\mu bar}$ for Pluto's…
As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars, this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a. the New…
The sheer size of high-accuracy, multi-band photometry, spectroscopy, astrometry and seismic data that space missions like Kepler, Gaia, PLATO, TESS, JWST and ground-based facilities under development such as MOONS, WEAVE and the LSST will…
In the last years, the Observatory of Padova (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova) and the University of Padova have been involved massively in projects dedicated to the exoplanets search, both ground, and…
We assess the on-orbit performance of the flare event trigger for the Hinode EUV Imaging Spectrometer. Our goal is to understand the time-delay between the occurrence of a flare, as defined by a prompt rise in soft X-ray emission, and the…
The distribution of exoplanets around low-mass stars is still not well understood. Such stars, however, present an excellent opportunity of reaching down to the rocky and habitable planet domains. The number of current detections used for…
We introduce PLanetary Atmospheric Transmission for Observer Noobs (PLATON), a Python package that calculates transmission spectra for exoplanets and retrieves atmospheric characteristics based on observed spectra. PLATON is easy to install…
Because of the development of large-format, wide-field cameras, microlensing surveys are now able to monitor millions of stars with sufficient cadence to detect planets. These new discoveries will span the full range of significance levels…
Radial velocity (RV) surveys have detected hundreds of exoplanets through their gravitational interactions with their host stars. Some will be transiting, but most lack sufficient follow-up observations to confidently detect (or rule out)…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will make precise astrometric measurements that can be used to detect planets around nearby stars. We have simulated SIM observations and estimated the ability of SIM to detect planets with given…
Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST), which will begin its scientific operations around 2027, is going to survey the sky area of the median-to-high Galactic latitude and median-to-high ecliptic latitude. The high astrometric precision of…
Aims: We predict the exoplanet yield of a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometer using Monte Carlo simulations. We quantify the number and properties of detectable exoplanets and identify those target stars that have the highest or…
We report new methods for evaluating realistic observing programs that search stars for planets by direct imaging, where observations are selected from an optimized star list, and where stars can be observed multiple times. We show how…
Context. Detecting regular dips in the light curve of a star is an easy way to detect the presence of an orbiting planet. COROT is a Franco-European mission launched at the end of 2006, and one of its main objectives is to detect planetary…
In 2005, the United States Congress passed a bill mandating the detection, tracking, cataloguing and characterization of 90\% of the 140 meter and larger near-Earth objects (NEOs) by 2020. At the deadline $\sim$35\% were detected, tracked…
A key legacy of the recently launched TESS mission will be to provide the astronomical community with many of the best transiting exoplanet targets for atmospheric characterization. However, time is of the essence to take full advantage of…
We classify various types of planetary lensing signals and the channels of detecting them. We estimate the relative frequencies of planet detections through the individual channels with special emphasis on the new channels to be…