Related papers: The Galactic Exoplanet Survey Telescope (GEST)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the search for and characterization of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres in the habitable zone via transmission spectroscopy. However, relatively little work has been done to use solar…
We present an analysis of high-resolution imaging of an exoplanet by a meter-class telescope positioned at a real image of the exoplanet created by the solar gravity lens. We assume an exoplanet viewed in full phase and a simple…
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…
We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…
An extremely sensitive all-sky survey will be carried out in the millimetre/submillimetre waveband by the forthcoming ESA mission Planck Surveyor. The main scientific goal of the mission is to make very accurate measurements of the spatial…
In support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy, this whitepaper outlines some key technology challenges pertaining to the remote search for life in exoplanetary systems. Finding evidence for life on rocky planets outside of our solar…
Microlensing is potentially sensitive to multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except Mercury, as well as to free floating planets. I review the landscape of microlensing planet searches, beginning with…
The bulge is a region of the Galaxy of tremendous interest for understanding galaxy formation. However measuring photometry and kinematics in it raises several inherent issues, such as severe crowding and high extinction in the visible.…
The detection and characterization of Earth-like planet is approaching rapidly thanks to radial velocity surveys (HARPS), transit searches (Corot, Kepler) and space observatories dedicated to their characterization are already in…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
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…
Among the group of extrasolar planets, transiting planets provide a great opportunity to obtain direct measurements for the basic physical properties, such as mass and radius of these objects. These planets are therefore highly important in…
Gravitational microlensing provides a new technique for studying the surfaces of distant stars. Microlensing events are detected in real time and can be followed up with precision photometry and spectroscopy. This method is particularly…
The TESS follow-up of a large number of known transiting exoplanets provide unique opportunity to study their physical properties more precisely. Being a space-based telescope, the TESS observations are devoid of any noise component…
The discovery of ubiquitous habitable extrasolar planets, combined with revolutionary advances in instrumentation and observational capabilities, has ushered in a renaissance in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Large…
Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…
The Twinkle space telescope has been designed for the characterisation of exoplanets and Solar System objects. Operating in a low Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit, Twinkle is equipped with a 45 cm telescope and visible (0.4 - 1um) and infrared…
Since the onset of the `space revolution' of high-precision high-cadence photometry, asteroseismology has been demonstrated as a powerful tool for informing Galactic archaeology investigations. The launch of the NASA TESS mission has…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has been designed in order to satisfy several different scientific objectives that can be addressed by a ten-year synoptic sky survey. However, LSST will also provide a large amount of data that…