Related papers: Are mirror planets opaque?
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star…
Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…
M dwarf stars, which have masses less than 60 per cent that of the Sun, make up 75 per cent of the population of the stars in the Galaxy [1]. The atmospheres of orbiting Earth-sized planets are observationally accessible via transmission…
Circumbinary planets whose orbits become unstable may be ejected, accreted, or even captured by one of the stars. We quantify the relative rates of these channels, for a binary of secondary star's mass fraction 0.1 with an orbit of 1AU. The…
We highlight the importance of gaseous TiO and VO opacity on the highly irradiated close-in giant planets. The atmospheres of these planets naturally fall into two classes that are somewhat analogous to the M- and L-type dwarfs. Those that…
Close binaries suppress the formation of circumstellar (S-type) planets and therefore significantly bias the inferred planet occurrence rates and statistical trends. After compiling various radial velocity and high-resolution imaging…
While the recent microlensing discoveries of super-Earths orbiting two M dwarf stars have been taken as support for the core accretion mechanism of giant planet formation, we show here that these planets could also have been formed by the…
When studying transiting exoplanets it is common to assume a spherical planet shape. However short rotational periods can cause a planet to bulge at its equator, as is the case with Saturn whose equatorial radius is almost 10% larger than…
Mirror symmetry is a plausible candidate for a fundamental symmetry of particle interactions which can be exactly conserved if a set of mirror particles exist. The properties of the mirror particles seem to provide an excellent candidate to…
A question that continues to perplex astronomers is the formation of tight stellar binaries. There is too much angular momentum in a collapsing and fragmenting protostellar cloud to form a stellar binary in situ with a separation less than…
Many of the directly imaged self-luminous gas giant exoplanets have been found to have cloudy atmospheres. Scattering of the emergent thermal radiation from these planets by the dust grains in their atmospheres should locally give rise to…
Small planets, 1-4x the size of Earth, are extremely common around Sun-like stars, and surprisingly so, as they are missing in our solar system. Recent detections have yielded enough information about this class of exoplanets to begin…
Submillimeter and near-infrared images of cool dusty debris disks and rings suggest the existence of unseen planets. At dusty but non-imaged stars, semi-major axes of associated planets can be estimated from the dust temperature. For some…
Strongly irradiated exoplanets develop extended atmospheres that can be utilized to probe the deeper planet layers. This connection is particularly useful in the study of small exoplanets, whose bulk atmospheres are challenging to…
Interest among astronomers in the detection of extra-solar planets is accelerating with the growing realization that it may soon be technically feasible. The ongoing renaissance in telescope construction and the anticipated launches of new…
We suggest that accretion of planet-bound dark matter by the Jovian planets, and by hot-Jupiter exoplanets, could be a significant source of their internal heat. The anomalously low internal heat of Uranus would then be explained if the…
Long-period transiting exoplanets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Their studies grant insights into planetary evolution akin to the Solar System planets, which, in…
The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…