Related papers: Extra-Solar Planets
Exoplanet science is now in its full expansion, particularly after the CoRoT and Kepler space missions that led us to the discovery of thousands of extra-solar planets. The last decade has taught us that UV observations play a major role in…
With improving methods and surveys, the young field of extrasolar planets has recently expanded into a qualitatively new domain - terrestrial (mostly rocky) planets. The first such planets were discovered during the past year, judging by…
The detection of thousands of extrasolar planets by the transit method naturally raises the question of whether potential extrasolar observers could detect the transits of the Solar System planets. We present a comprehensive analysis of the…
Over the past two years, the search for low-mass extrasolar planets has led to the detection of seven so-called 'hot Neptunes' or 'super-Earths' around Sun-like stars. These planets have masses 5-20 times larger than the Earth and are…
High contrast direct imaging of exoplanets can provide many important observables, including measurements of the orbit, spectra that probe the lower layers of the atmosphere, and phase variations of the planet, but cannot directly measure…
In support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy, this whitepaper outlines some key technology challenges pertaining to the remote search for life in exoplanetary systems. Finding evidence for life on rocky planets outside of our solar…
This is the second paper in a series of papers showing the results of extrasolar planet population synthesis calculations. In the companion paper (Paper I), we have presented in detail our methods. By applying an observational detection…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
The discovery of the planet around the solar-type star 51 Pegasi marked a watershed in the search for extrasolar planets. Since then seven other solar-type stars have been discovered, of which several have surprisingly short orbital…
Detections of massive extrasolar moons are shown feasible with the Kepler space telescope. Kepler's findings of about 50 exoplanets in the stellar habitable zone naturally make us wonder about the habitability of their hypothetical moons.…
Started approximately in the late 1980s, exoplanetology has up to now unveiled the main gross bulk characteristics of planets and planetary systems. In the future it will benefit from more and more large telescopes and advanced space…
The first transiting extrasolar planet, orbiting HD209458, was a Doppler wobble planet before its transits were discovered with a 10 cm CCD camera. Wide-angle CCD cameras, by monitoring in parallel the light curves of tens of thousands of…
We introduce a mathematical framework for statistical exoplanet population and astrobiology studies that may help directing future observational efforts and experiments. The approach is based on a set of differential equations and provides…
Searching the literature, we found 25 stars with directly imaged planets and candidates. We gathered photometric and spectral information for all these objects to derive their luminosities in a homogeneous way, taking a bolometric…
The magnetospheric emissions from extrasolar planets represent a science frontier for the next decade. All of the solar system giant planets and the Earth produce radio emissions as a result of interactions between their magnetic fields and…
We consider the metallicities and kinematics of nearby stars known to have planetary-mass companions in the general context of the overall properties of the local Galactic Disk. We have used Stromgren photometry to determine abundances for…
The initial task that confronted extrasolar-planet transit surveys was to monitor enough stars with sufficient photometric precision and complete phase coverage. Numerous searches have been pursued over the last few years. Among these…
Numerous telescopes and techniques have been used to find and study extrasolar planets, but none has been more successful than NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, the smallest planets to…
The nearly circular (mean eccentricity <e>~0.06) and coplanar (mean mutual inclination <i>~3 deg) orbits of the Solar System planets motivated Kant and Laplace to put forth the hypothesis that planets are formed in disks, which has…
One of the most surprising discoveries of extrasolar planets is the detection of planets in moderately close binary star systems. The Jovian-type planets in the two binaries of Gamma Cephei and GJ 86 have brought to the forefront questions…