Related papers: Prospects for Spectroscopic Reflected-light Planet…
The detection and characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets is one of the chief goals of astrophysics for the coming decades. Imaging in reflected light is well suited for characterizing Earth-like planets, as much can be learned…
Models are developed to simulate lightcurves of stars dimmed by transiting exoplanets with and without rings. These models are then applied to \textit{Kepler} photometry to search for planetary rings in a sample of 21 exoplanets, mostly hot…
Measurements of the frequency with which short-period planets occur around main sequence stars allows a direct prediction of the number and types of such planets that will be amenable to characterization by high-contrast instruments on…
In the near future we will have ground- and space-based telescopes that are designed to observe and characterize Earth-like planets. While attention is focused on exoplanets orbiting main sequence stars, more than 150 exoplanets have…
It is expected that the next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will deliver the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. The emitted thermal infrared light from the planet should show no phase effect assuming the planet…
High-precision radial velocity planet searches have surveyed over ~2000 nearby stars and detected over ~200 planets. While these same stars likely harbor many additional planets, they will become increasingly challenging to detect, as they…
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…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
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…
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…
For terrestrial exoplanets with thin atmospheres or no atmospheres, the surface contributes light to the reflected light signal of the planet. Measurement of the variety of disk-integrated brightnesses of bodies in the Solar System and the…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
Direct imaging of widely separated exoplanets from space will obtain their reflected light spectra and measure their atmospheric properties, and small and temperate planets will be the focus of the next generation telescopes. In this work,…
One of the great quests of astronomy is to obtain the spectrum of a terrestrial planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star, and the dominant challenge in doing so is to isolate the light of the planet from that of the star.…
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 new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
The Spectrograph of the RISTRETTO instrument is now currently being manufactured. RISTETTO is an instrument designed to detect and characterize the reflected light of nearby exoplanets. It combines high contrast imaging and high resolution…
We propose and evaluate the feasibility of a new strategy to search for planets via microlensing observations. This new strategy is designed to detect planets in "wide" orbits, i.e., with orbital separation, a, greater than ~1.5 R_E.…
Survey strategies for upcoming exoplanet direct imaging missions have considered varying assumptions of prior knowledge. Precursor radial velocity surveys could have detected nearby exo-Earths and provided prior orbit and mass constraints.…
The direct observation of cold and temperate planets within 1 to 10 AU would be extremely valuable for uncovering their atmospheric compositions but remains a formidable challenge with current astronomical methods. Ground-based optical…