Related papers: On the Selection of Photometric Planetary Transits
We present an algorithm that can detect blends of bright stars with fainter, un-associated eclipsing binaries. Such systems contaminate searches for transiting planets, in particular in crowded fields where blends are common. Spectroscopic…
We investigate the rate of false planetary transit detection due to blending with eclipsing binaries. Our approach is purely empirical and is based on the analysis of the artificially blended light curves of the eclipsing binary stars in…
We present a theoretical analysis of the optical light curves (LCs) for short-period high-mass transiting extrasolar planet systems. Our method considers the primary transit, the secondary eclipse, and the overall phase shape of the LC…
The radial velocity technique is currently used to classify transiting objects. While capable of identifying grazing binary eclipses, this technique cannot reliably identify blends, a chance overlap of a faint background eclipsing binary…
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…
We analyze the photometry of 117 OGLE stars with periodic transit events for the presence of ellipsoidal light variations, which indicate the presence of massive companions. We find that ~50% of objects may have stellar companions, mostly…
We propose a method to distinguish between planetary and stellar companions to stars which present a periodic decrease in brightness, interpreted as a transit. Light curves from a total of 177 stars from the OGLE project were fitted by the…
The Wide Field Camera Transit Survey is a pioneer program aimed to search for extra-solar planets in the near-infrared. The standard data reduction pipeline of the program uses aperture photometry to construct the light curves. We…
In this paper, we determine the detectability of eclipsing binary star companions from eclipse timing variations using the Kepler mission dataset. Extensive and precise stellar time-series photometry from space-based missions enable…
Spotted stars in eclipsing binary systems allow us to gather significant information about the stellar surface inhomogeneities that is otherwise impossible from only photometric data. Starspots can be scanned using the eclipse (or transit)…
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…
Eclipsing binary star systems provide the most accurate method of measuring both the masses and radii of stars. Moreover, they enable testing tidal synchronization and circularization theories, as well as constraining models of stellar…
Wide-field photometric transit surveys for Jupiter-sized planets are inundated by astrophysical false positives, namely systems that contain an eclipsing binary and mimic the desired photometric signature. We discuss several examples of…
Ground-based photometric surveys have led to the discovery of six transiting exoplanets, five of which were detected by the OGLE survey. The FLAMES multi-object spectrograph on the VLT has permitted a very efficient follow-up of the OGLE…
We investigate in this paper the astrophysical false-positive configuration in exoplanet-transit surveys that involves eclipsing binaries and giant planets which present only a secondary eclipse, as seen from the Earth. To test how an…
One of the obstacles in the search for exoplanets via transits is the large number of candidates that must be followed up, few of which ultimately prove to be exoplanets. Any method that could make this process more efficient by somehow…
Ground-based wide-field surveys for nearby transiting gas giants are yielding far fewer true planets than astrophysical false positives, of which some are difficult to reject. Recent experience has highlighted the need for careful analysis…
The new photometric space-borne survey missions CoRoT and Kepler will be able to detect minute flux variations in binary stars due to relativistic beaming caused by the line-of-sight motion of their components. In all but very short period…
We study the phase curves for the planets of our Solar System; which, is considered as a non-compact planetary system. We focus on modeling the small variations of the light curve, based on the three photometric effects: reflection,…
I present a brief summary of three different types of binary star - astrometric, spectroscopic and eclipsing - and tabulate the properties of these systems that can be determined directly from observations. Eclipsing binary stars are the…