Related papers: Characterising Extrasolar Planets in Reflected Lig…
Stars and their exoplanets evolve together. Depending on the physical characteristics of these systems, such as age, orbital distance and activity of the host stars, certain types of star-exoplanet interactions can dominate during given…
Atmospheric characterization of Earth-like exoplanets through reflected light spectroscopy is a key goal for upcoming direct imaging missions. A critical challenge in this endeavor is the accurate determination of planetary mass, which may…
The discovery of exoplanets has both focused and expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The consideration of Earth as an exoplanet, the knowledge of the orbital parameters of individual exoplanets, and our new understanding…
Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With advanced…
Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
Extrasolar planets appear in a chemical diversity unseen in our own solar system. Despite their atmospheres being cold, continuous and transient plasma processes do affect these atmosphere where clouds form with great efficiency. Clouds can…
Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered and the search for life outside Earth is at the forefront of astrophysical research. The planets we observe show a mind-blowing diversity that current theories strive to explain as part of the…
We apply the Minimum Description Length model selection approach to the detection of extra-solar planets, and use this example to show how specification of the experimental design affects the prior distribution on the model parameter space…
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
A planetary mass scale and a system of composition codes are presented for describing the geophysical characteristics of exoplanets and Solar System planets, dwarf planets, and spherical moons. The composition classes characterize the rock,…
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…
It is now recognized that energetic stellar photon and particle radiation evaporates and erodes planetary atmospheres and controls upper atmospheric chemistry. Key exoplanet host stars will be too faint at X-ray wavelengths for accurate…
The disciplines of asteroseismology and extrasolar planet science overlap methodically in the branch of high-precision photometric time series observations. Light curves are, amongst others, useful to measure intrinsic stellar variability…
Gravitational microlensing finds planets through their gravitational influence on the light coming from a more distant background star. The presence of the planet is then inferred from the tell-tale brightness variations of the background…
From simulations of transit observations, it is found that the detectability of extrasolar planets depends only on two parameters: The signal-to-noise ratio during a transit, and the number of data points observed during transits. All other…
As the number of detected extrasolar planets increases, exoplanet databases become a valuable resource, confirming some details about planetary formation, but also challenging our theories with new unexpected properties.
It has been posited that lunar eclipse observations may help predict the in-transit signature of Earth-like extrasolar planets. However, a comparative analysis of the two phenomena addressing in detail the transport of stellar light through…
Specially-designed microlensing searches, some of which have been underway for several years, are sensitive to extrasolar planets orbiting the most common stars in our Galaxy. Microlensing is particularly well-suited to the detection of…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…