Related papers: Prospects for Spectroscopic Reflected-light Planet…

The RISTRETTO project is aiming to build an instrument that will detect the reflected light from close-by exoplanet. It is a two stage instrument: An extreme AO system in the visible, followed by a seven spaxel single mode High resolution…

Doppler observations of exoplanet systems have been a very expensive technique, mainly due to the high costs of high-resolution stable spectrographs. Recent advances in instrumentation enable affordable Doppler planet detections with…

We propose to use Kepler in 2-wheel mode to conduct a detailed search for Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs (spectral types from M7 to L3). This population of objects presents several advantages for exoplanet…

Massive gravitational microlensing programs were begun about a decade ago as a means to search for compact baryonic dark matter in the Galaxy, but before the first events were detected the technique was also proposed as a means of detecting…

We propose and evaluate the feasibility of a new strategy to search for planets via microlensing. This new strategy is designed to detect planets in "wide" orbits, i.e., with orbital separation, $a$ greater than $\sim 1.5 R_E$. Planets in…

We report the first direct detection of an exoplanet in the visible polarized light. The transiting planet HD189733b is one of the very hot Jupiters with shortest periods and, thus, smallest orbits, which makes them ideal candidates for…

One proposed method for finding terrestrial planets around nearby stars is to use two spacecraft--a telescope and a specially shaped occulter that is specifically designed to prevent all but a tiny fraction of the starlight from diffracting…

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…

The close-in extrasolar giant planets [CEGPs], $\ltorder$ 0.05 AU from their parent stars, may have a large component of optically reflected light. We present theoretical optical photometric light curves and polarization curves for the CEGP…

The growing rate of increase in the number of the discovered extra-solar planets which has consequently raised the enthusiasm to explore the universe in hope of finding earth-like planets has resulted in the wide use of Gravitational…

We present the discovery of a planet on a very wide orbit in the microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0838. The signal of the planet is well separated from the main peak of the event and the planet-star projected separation is found to be twice…

In our solar system massive outer planets dominate in terms of both mass and angular momentum, but few such planets are among the more than 4000 currently confirmed exoplanets, and none of these have accurately determined densities. Here I…

Studies of transiting extrasolar planets are of key importance for understanding the nature of planets outside our solar system because their masses, diameters, and bulk densities can be measured. An important part of transit-search…

Direct measurements of the spectra of extrasolar giant planets are the keys to determining their physical and chemical nature. The goal of theory is to provide the tools and context with which such data are understood. It is only by putting…

Rings around giant exoplanets (hereafter 'exorings') are still a missing planetary phenomenon among the vast number of discovered planets. Despite the fact there exist a large number of methods for identifying and characterizing these…

In the near-future, atmospheric characterization of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone will become possible via reflectance spectroscopy with future telescopes such as the proposed LUVOIR and HabEx missions. While previous studies…

Direct-imaging spectra hold rich information about a planet's atmosphere and surface, and several space-based missions aiming at such observations will become a reality in the near future. Previous spectral retrieval works have resulted in…

We report on a survey devoted for the search of exo-planets around young and nearby stars carried out with NACO at the VLT. The detection limit for 28 among the best available targets vs. the angular separation from the star is presented.…

So far, most of the about 5700 exoplanets have been discovered mainly with radial velocity and transit methods. These techniques are sensitive to planets in close orbits, not being able to probe large star--planet separations. $\mu$-lensing…

High-resolution ground-based optical speckle and near-infrared adaptive optics images are taken to search for stars in close angular proximity to host stars of candidate planets identified by the NASA Kepler Mission. Neighboring stars are a…