Related papers: Detecting Extra-Solar Planets via Microlensing at …
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…
In the recent years, interferometric arrays of optical telescopes have reached sizes of the order of 100m, but they have yet to produce high-resolution images. The analysis of image formation now shows that such images are obtainable…
The rapid analysis of ongoing gravitational microlensing events has been integral to the successful detection and characterisation of cool planets orbiting low mass stars in the Galaxy. In this paper we present an implementation of search…
In 1998 the EXPORT team monitored microlensing event lightcurves using a CCD camera on the IAC 0.8m telescope on Tenerife to evaluate the prospect of using northern telescopes to find microlens anomalies that reveal planets orbiting the…
The challenge for optical detection of terrestial planet is the 25 magnitude brightness contrast between the planet and its host star. This paper introduces a new pupil design that produces a very dark null along its symmetry axis. By…
In the last two decades, thousands of extrasolar planets were discovered based on different observational techniques, and their number must increase substantially in virtue of the ongoing and near-future approved missions and facilities. It…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
Observations of extrasolar planets using Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS), if coupled with an extreme Adaptive Optics system and analyzed with a Simultaneous Differential Imaging technique (SDI), are a powerful tool to detect and…
Gravitational microlensing events with high peak magnifications provide a much enhanced sensitivity to the detection of planets around the lens star. However, estimates of peak magnification during the early stages of an event by means of…
The dust tails of comets similar to Hale-Bopp can scatter as much optical light as does the Earth. Space-based observatories such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder or Darwin that will detect extra-solar terrestrial planets also will be able…
Gravitational microlensing is known for baryoninc dark matter searches. Here we show that microlensing also provides a unique tool for the detection of low mass planets (such as earths and neptunes) from the ground. A planetary system forms…
Gravitational microlensing is a robust tool to detect and directly measure the abundance and mass of any kind of compact objects, either in our galaxy or in the extragalatic domain. On basis to generic, broadly applicable arguments, it is…
With the recent discoveries of hundreds of extrasolar planets, the search for planets like Earth and life in the universe, is quickly gaining momentum. In the future, large space observatories could directly detect the light scattered from…
(abridged) The discovery of OGLE 2005-BLG-390Lb, the first cool rocky/icy exoplanet, impressively demonstrated the sensitivity of the microlensing technique to extra-solar planets below 10 M_earth. A planet of 1 M_earth in the same spot…
We investigate the possibility of identifying massive objects (lenses) in the Galactic Center region (GC) by means of pulsar timing. The well known intensity change due to microlensing is found to be less important. For typical stellar…
It is expected that the next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will deliver the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. The emitted thermal infrared light from the planet should show no phase effect assuming the planet…
An LSST-like survey of the Galactic plane (deep images every 3-4 days) could probe the Galactic distribution of planets by two distinct methods: gravitational microlensing of planets beyond the snow line and transits by planets very close…
In the currently-favored paradigm of planet formation, the location of the snow line in the protoplanetary disk plays a crucial role. Determining the demographics of planets beyond the snow line of stars of various masses is thus essential…
Observations of the gravitational microlensing event MOA 2003-BLG-32/OGLE 2003-BLG-219 are presented for which the peak magnification was over 500, the highest yet reported. Continuous observations around the peak enabled a sensitive search…
We demonstrate that gravitational lensing can be used to discover and study planets in the habitable zones of nearby dwarf stars. If appropriate software is developed, a new generation of monitoring programs will automatically conduct a…