Related papers: Extrasolar Giant Planets under Strong Stellar Irra…
The evolution of a giant planet within the stellar envelope of a main-sequence star is investigated as a possible mechanism for enhancing the stellar metallicities of the parent stars of extrasolar planetary systems. Three-dimensional…
The effects of multi-layered clouds in the atmospheres of Earth-like planets orbiting different types of stars are studied. The radiative effects of cloud particles are directly correlated with their wavelength-dependent optical properties.…
The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) from the infrared (IR) through the ultraviolet (UV) is dominated by emission from stars, either directly or through absorption and reradiation by dust. It can thus give information on the star…
Several circumbinary planets have recently been discovered. The orbit of a planet around a binary stellar system poses several dynamic constraints. The effects that radiation from the host stars may have on the planet atmospheres must be…
We propose a method for observing transiting exoplanets with near-infrared high-resolution spectrometers. We aim to create a robust data analysis method for recovering atmospheric transmission spectra from transiting exoplanets over a wide…
Orbital variation in reflected starlight from exoplanets could eventually be used to detect surface oceans. Exoplanets with rough surfaces, or dominated by atmospheric Rayleigh scattering, should reach peak brightness in full phase, orbital…
(abridged abstract) Theoretical arguments indicate that close-in terrestial exoplanets may have weak magnetic fields, especially in the case of planets more massive than Earth (super-Earths). Planetary magnetic fields, however, constitute…
The physical bases of the detection and characterisation of extrasolar planets in the reflected light and thermal emission regimes are reviewed. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, including artefacts, in the determination of…
We present an analysis on the detection viability of refraction effects in Kepler's exoplanet atmospheres using binning techniques for their light curves in order to compare against simulated refraction effects. We split the Kepler…
We construct atmosphere models for strongly magnetized neutron stars with surface fields $B\sim 10^{12}-10^{15}$ G and effective temperatures $T_{\rm eff}\sim 10^6-10^7$ K. The atmospheres directly determine the characteristics of thermal…
The atmospheres of planets (including Earth) and the outer layers of stars have often been treated in radiative transfer as plane-parallel media, instead of spherical shells, which can lead to inaccuracy, e.g. limb darkening. We give an…
A scatter plot of exoplanet mass against red giant host star radius demonstrates an interesting positive trend: larger stars have more massive planets. This implies that the evolution of a star towards a red giant affects the masses of…
Young stars with masses 2-8 Suns, called the Herbig Ae and Be stars, often show a near-infrared excess too large to explain with a hydrostatically-supported circumstellar disk of gas and dust. At the same time the accretion flow carrying…
The structure of static atmospheres around unmagnetized neutron stars undergoing steady, spherical accretion is discussed. We focus on the ``hot'' configurations presented by Turolla et al. (1994) and calculate the radiation spectrum using…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
[Abridged] Recently, there have been a series of detections of molecules in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets using high spectral resolution (R~100,000) observations, mostly using the CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle…
Close-in planets are in jeopardy as their host stars evolve off the main sequence to the subgiant and red giant phases. In this paper, we explore the influences of the stellar mass (in the range 1.5--2\Mso ), mass-loss prescription, planet…
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is…
Of the over 800 exoplanets detected to date, over half are on non-circular orbits, with eccentricities as high as 0.93. Such orbits lead to time-variable stellar heating, which has implications for the planet's atmospheric dynamical regime.…
Large ground- and space-based telescopes will be able to observe Earth-like planets in the near future. We explore how different planetary surfaces can strongly influence the climate, atmospheric composition, and remotely detectable spectra…