Related papers: Sensitivity of the Astrometric Technique in Detect…
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…
Exoplanets can be detected with various observational techniques. Among them, radial velocity (RV) has the key advantages of revealing the architecture of planetary systems and measuring planetary mass and orbital eccentricities. RV…
Astrometry is less sensitive to stellar activity than the radial velocity technique when attempting to detect Earth mass planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars. This is due to a smaller number of physical processes affecting the…
Stellar activity causes difficulties in the characterization of transiting exoplanets. Studies have been performed to quantify its impact on infrared interferometry, but not in the visible domain, which however allows reaching better…
Orbital solutions for binary or multiple stellar systems that combine astrometry (e.g., position angles and angular separations) with spectroscopy (radial velocities) have important advantages over astrometric-only or spectroscopic-only…
The exoplanet detection is the most exciting and challenging field of astronomy. The discovery of many exoplanets has revolutionized our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems and has showed new ways to search for…
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…
Stellar activity strongly affects and may prevent the detection of Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars with radial velocity technics. Astrometry is in principle less sensitive to stellar activity because the…
The orbital parameters of extra-solar planets have a significant impact on the probability that the planet will transit the host star. This was recently demonstrated by the transit detection of HD 17156b whose favourable eccentricity and…
Since 2008 we have run an observational program to accurately measure the characteristics of known exoplanet systems hosting close-in transiting giant planets, i.e. hot Jupiters. Our study is based on high-quality photometric follow-up…
The sensitivity and astrometry upgrade ASTRA of the Keck Interferometer is introduced. After a brief overview of the underlying interferometric principles, the technology and concepts of the upgrade are presented. The interferometric…
We review the state of the art in follow-up photometry for planetary transit searches. Three topics are discussed: (1) Photometric monitoring of planets discovered by radial velocity to detect possible transits (2) Follow-up photometry of…
(abridged) We present results from a detailed set of end-to-end numerical simulations of SIM narrow-angle astrometric measurements and data analysis to illustrate the enormous potential that SIM has for the discovery and characterization of…
Astrometry can detect rocky planets in a broad range of masses and orbital distances and measure their masses and three-dimensional orbital parameters, including eccentricity and inclination, to provide the properties of terrestrial…
The timing method, using either stellar pulsations or eclipse timing of close binaries as a clock, is proving to be an efficient way to detect planets around stars that have evolved beyond the red giant branch. In this article we present a…
The study of multiple extrasolar planetary systems has the opportunity to obtain constraints for the planetary masses and orbital inclinations via the detection of mutual perturbations. The analysis of precise radial velocity measurements…
Ultra Fast Astronomy is a new frontier becoming enabled by improved detector technology allowing discovery of optical transients on millisecond to nanosecond time scales. These may reveal counterparts of energetic processes such as fast…
The problem of determination of the orbital velocity of an astrometric satellite from its own observational data is studied. It is well known that data processing of microarcsecond-level astrometric observations imposes very stringent…
Combining adaptive optics and interferometric observations results in a considerable contrast gain compared to single-telescope, extreme AO systems. Taking advantage of this, the ExoGRAVITY project is a survey of known young giant…
The study of stellar oscillations - asteroseismology - has revolutionized our understanding of the physical properties of the Sun, and similar potential for other stars has been demonstrated in recent years. In particular, asteroseismic…