Related papers: Transit Target Selection Using Reduced Proper Moti…
Accurate determinations of atmospheric parameters (effective temperature $T_{\rm eff}$, surface gravity log $g$ and metallicity [Fe/H]) and distances for large complete samples are of vital importance for various Galactic studies. We have…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a technique to find such systems using all-sky small-aperture…
(abridged) The velocity distribution f(v) of nearby stars is estimated, via a maximum- likelihood algorithm, from the positions and tangential velocities of a kinematically unbiased sample of 14369 stars observed by the HIPPARCOS satellite.…
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…
We report the discovery of 182 new southern stars with proper motion larger than 0.45''/yr. The stars were found in an expansion of the SUPERBLINK proper motion survey to 8,980 square degrees south of Decl.=-30. The new high proper motion…
We have performed photometric observations of nearly 7 million stars with 8 < V < 15 with the SuperWASP-North instrument from La Palma between 2004 May-September. Fields in the RA range 17-18hr, yielding over 185,000 stars with sufficient…
We present spectra of 36 nearby star candidates and 3 red giant candidates, identified in the DENIS database by Phan-Bao et al. (2003). 32 of the dwarf candidates are indeed nearby red dwarfs, with spectral types from M5.5 to M8.5. Out of…
Deep, ground based, optical wide-field supernova searches are capable of detecting a large number of supernovae over a broad redshift range up to z~1.5. While it is practically unfeasible to obtain spectroscopic redshifts of all the…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes…
[abridged] The severe crowding in the direction of the inner Milky Way suggests that the census of stars within a few tens of parsecs in that direction may not be complete. We search for new nearby objects companions of known high proper…
High contrast imaging searches for exoplanets have been conducted on 2.4-10 m telescopes, typically at H band (1.6 microns) and used exposure times of ~1 hr to search for planets with semi-major axes of > ~10 AU. We are beginning to plan…
Photometry with the transit method has arguably been the most successful exoplanet discovery method to date. A short overview about the rise of that method to its present status is given. The method's strength is the rich set of parameters…
AIMS: We checked a sample of 545 F stars within 50 pc for wide companions using existing near-infrared and optical sky surveys. METHODS: Applying the common proper motion (CPM) criterion, we detected wide companion candidates with 6-120…
The detection of planetary transits in the light curves of active stars, featuring correlated noise in the form of stellar variability, remains a challenge. Depending on the noise characteristics, we show that the traditional technique that…
Transit and radial velocity searches are two techniques for identifying nearby extrasolar planets to Earth that transit bright stars. Identifying a robust sample of these exoplanets around bright stars for detailed atmospheric…
In the effort to characterize the masses, radii, and atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets, there is an urgent need to find examples of such planets transiting nearby M dwarfs. The MEarth Project is an ongoing effort to do so, as…
We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical experiment has been designed to…
We have made a comprehensive transit search for exoplanets down to about 2 Earth radii in the HD 209458 system, based on nearly uninterrupted broadband optical photometry obtained with the MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars)…
Large pristine samples of red clump stars are highly sought after given that they are standard candles and give precise distances even at large distances. However, it is difficult to cleanly select red clumps stars because they can have the…
We investigate the planetary transit detectability in the presence of stellar rotational activity from light curves for young M-dwarfs and estimate improvements of the detection at near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. Making maps of the transit…