Related papers: A modified version of the Gregory-Loredo method fo…
This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…
(Abridged) Space missions to search for exo-planets via the transit method, such as COROT, Eddington and Kepler, will need to address problems associated with the automated and efficient detection of planetary transits in light curves…
Context. Detecting regular dips in the light curve of a star is an easy way to detect the presence of an orbiting planet. COROT is a Franco-European mission launched at the end of 2006, and one of its main objectives is to detect planetary…
Context. Transit detection algorithms are mathematical tools used for detecting planets in the photometric data of transit surveys. In this work we study their application to space-based surveys. Aims: Space missions are exploring the…
The treatment of systematic noise is a significant aspect of transit exoplanet data processing due to the signal strength of systematic noise relative to a transit signal. Typically the standard approach to transit detection is to estimate…
Light curves produced by wide-field exoplanet transit surveys such as CoRoT, Kepler, and TESS are affected by sensor-wide systematic noise which is correlated both spatiotemporally and with other instrumental parameters such as photometric…
Transit photometry is perhaps the most successful method for detecting exoplanets to date. However, a substantial amount of signal processing is needed since the dip in the signal detected, an indication that there is a planet in transit,…
The detrending algorithms which are widely used to reduce the impact of stellar variability on space-based transit surveys are ill-suited for estimating the parameters of confirmed planets, as they unavoidably alter the transit signal. We…
We present a simple and powerful method for extracting transit signals associated with a known transiting planet from noisy light curves. Assuming the orbital period of the planet is known and the signal is periodic, we illustrate that…
Surveys for exoplanetary transits are usually limited not by photon noise but rather by the amount of red noise in their data. In particular, although the CoRoT spacebased survey data are being carefully scrutinized, significant new sources…
We present an algorithm that allows fast and efficient detection of transits, including planetary transits, from light-curves. The method is based on building an ensemble of fiducial models and compressing the data using the MOPED…
The idea of finding extrasolar planets (ESPs) through observations of drops in stellar brightness due to transiting objects has been around for decades. It has only been in the last ten years, however, that any serious attempts to find ESPs…
The pioneer space mission for photometric exoplanet searches, CoRoT, steadily monitors about 12000 stars in each of its fields of view. Transit detection algorithms are applied to derive promising planetary candidates, which are then…
We carry out a comparative analysis of the performance of three algorithms widely used to identify significant periodicities in radial-velocity (RV) datasets: the Generalised Lomb-Scargle Periodogram (GLS), its modified version based on…
The unprecedented photometric precision of Kepler mission allows searching for Earth-like planets. However, it remains difficult to distinguish these low signal-to-noise planets from the false alarms originating from correlated and…
Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while…
Current plans call for the first Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, TPF-C, to be a monolithic space telescope with a coronagraph for achieving high contrast. The coronagraph removes the diffracted starlight allowing the nearby planet to be…
I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect…
We investigate the improved detection of extrasolar planets around eclipsing binaries using eclipse minima timing, and extrasolar moons around transiting planets using transit timing, offered by the upcoming COROT (ESA, 2005), Kepler (NASA,…
There are more than 5000 confirmed and validated planets beyond the solar system to date, more than half of which were discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. The catalog of Kepler's exoplanet candidates has only been extensively analyzed…