Related papers: Planetary Transits Toward the Galactic Bulge

A 52'X52' field in the Lupus Galactic plane was observed with the ANU 1m telescope for 53 nights during 2005 and 2006 in a search for transiting Hot Jupiter planets. A total of 2200 images were obtained. We have sampled 120,000 stars via…

Prior to the 1990s, speculations about the occurrence of planets around other stars were based only on planet formation theory, observations of circumstellar disks, and the knowledge that at least one seemingly ordinary star had managed to…

We analyze a 19-night photometric search for transiting extrasolar planets in the open cluster NGC 1245. An automated transit search algorithm with quantitative selection criteria finds six transit candidates; none are bona fide planetary…

Transiting planet systems offer an unique opportunity to observationally constrain proposed models of the interiors (radius, composition) and atmospheres (chemistry, dynamics) of extrasolar planets. The spectacular successes of ground-based…

Small planets are common around late-M dwarfs and can be detected through highly precise photometry by the transit method. Planets orbiting nearby stars are particularly important as they are often the best-suited for future follow-up…

A unique analytical solution of planet and star parameters can be derived from an extrasolar planet transit light curve under a number of assumptions. This analytical solution can be used to choose the best planet transit candidates for…

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…

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA-sponsored Explorer mission that will perform a wide-field survey for planets that transit bright host stars. Here, we predict the properties of the transiting planets that TESS will…

Earth-sized exoplanets that transit nearby, late spectral type red dwarfs will be prime targets for atmospheric characterization in the coming decade. Such systems, however, are difficult to find via wide-field transit surveys like Kepler…

When an extrasolar planet passes in front of its star (transits), its radius can be measured from the decrease in starlight and its orbital period from the time between transits. Multiple planets transiting the same star reveal more: period…

This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…

The discovery of planets around PSR~1257+12 suggests that planetary systems may be detected around the recycled pulsars found in globular clusters. Planetary systems in dense clusters have lifetimes to disruption due to perturbations by…

The search for extrasolar planets is strongly motivated by the goal of characterizing how frequent habitable worlds and life may be within the Galaxy. Whilst much effort has been spent on searching for Earth-like planets, large moons may…

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is NASA's next astrophysics flagship mission, expected to launch in late 2026. As one of Roman's core community science surveys, the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS) will collect…

The idea of finding extrasolar planets (ESPs) through observations of drops in stellar brightness due to transiting objects has been around for decades. It has only been in the last ten years, however, that any serious attempts to find ESPs…

Open clusters potentially provide an ideal environment for the search for transiting extrasolar planets since they feature a relatively large number of stars of the same known age and metallicity at the same distance. With this motivation,…

Transits on single stars are rare. The probability rarely exceeds a few per cent. Furthermore, this probability rapidly approaches zero at increasing orbital period. Therefore transit surveys have been predominantly limited to the inner…

We present first results from the Survey for Transiting Extrasolar Planets in Stellar Systems (STEPSS). Our goal is to assess the frequency of close-in extrasolar planets around main-sequence stars in several open clusters. By concentrating…

Two years ago, the OGLE-III survey (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) announced the detection of 54 short period multi-transiting objects in the Galactic bulge (Udalski et al., 2002a, 2002b). Some of these objects were considered to…

We investigate an in-situ formation scenario for Earth-mass terrestrial planets in short-period, potentially habitable orbits around low-mass stars (M_star < 0.3 M_sun). We then investigate the feasibility of detecting these Earth-sized…