Related papers: Sensitivity of the Astrometric Technique in Detect…
Astronomical polarimetry is a powerful technique that can provide physical information sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain by any other type of observation. Almost every class of binary star can benefit from polarimetric…
CONTEXT. It is theoretically possible for rings to have formed around extrasolar planets in a similar way to that in which they formed around the giant planets in our solar system. However, no such rings have been detected to date. AIMS: We…
The precise Doppler method for measuring stellar radial velocities (RV) is a fundamental technique in modern astronomy. This method records a star's spectrum and detects periodic Doppler shifts in its spectral features, which indicate the…
Astrometry -- the precise measurement of positions and motions of celestial objects -- has emerged as a promising avenue for characterizing the dark matter population in our Galaxy. By leveraging recent advances in simulation-based…
This paper reviews methods which can be used to detect binaries involving low- and intermediate-mass stars, with special emphasis on evolved systems. Besides the traditional methods involving radial-velocity or photometric monitoring, the…
The canonical methods for gravitational wave detection are ground- and space-based laser interferometry, pulsar timing, and polarization of the cosmic microwave background. But as has been suggested by numerous investigators, astrometry…
This paper reviews the basic technical characteristics of the ground-based photometric searches for transiting planets, and discusses a possible observational selection effect. I suggest that additional photometric observations of the…
The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique -- direct…
Although not designed as an astrometric instrument, Kepler is expected to produce astrometric results of a quality appropriate to support many of the astrophysical investigations enabled by its photometric results. On the basis of data…
Extra-solar planets can be efficiently detected in gravitational microlensing events of high magnification. High accuracy photometry is required over a short, well-defined time interval only, of order 10-30 hours. Most planets orbiting the…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
The observational basis for asteroseismology is being dramatically strengthened, through more than two years of data from the CoRoT satellite, the flood of data coming from the Kepler mission and, in the slightly longer term, from dedicated…
We investigate the astrometric effects of stellar surface structures as a practical limitation to ultra-high-precision astrometry, e.g. in the context of exoplanet searches, and to quantify the expected effects in different regions of the…
Conventional techniques that measure rapid time variations are inefficient or inadequate to discover and observe rapidly pulsating astronomical sources. It is therefore conceivable that there exist some classes of objects pulsating with…
The direct detection of exoplanets has been the subject of intensive research in the recent years. Data obtained with future high-contrast imaging instruments optimized for giant planets direct detection are strongly limited by the speckle…
Measuring the orbits of directly-imaged exoplanets requires precise astrometry at the milliarcsec level over long periods of time due to their wide separation to the stars ($\gtrsim$10 au) and long orbital period ($\gtrsim$20 yr). To reach…
This study introduces a new "Non-Dimensional" star identification algorithm to reliably identify the stars observed by a wide field-of-view star tracker when the focal length and optical axis offset values are known with poor accuracy. This…
Though efforts to detect them have been made with a variety of methods, no technique can claim a successful, confirmed detection of a moon outside the Solar System yet. Moon detection methods are restricted in capability to detecting moons…
An automatic Bayesian Kepler periodogram has been developed for identifying and characterizing multiple planetary orbits in precision radial velocity data. The periodogram is powered by a parallel tempering MCMC algorithm which is capable…
The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data have been used lately to estimate the inclination of the orbital plane of candidate extrasolar planets. Whereas most of these investigations derive almost face-on orbits, we show that the…