Related papers: Astrometric Microlensing as a Method of Discoverin…
Context: With no conclusive detection to date, the search for exomoons, satellites of planets orbiting other stars, remains a formidable challenge. Detecting these objects, compiling a population-level sample and constraining their…
The search for extrasolar Earth-like planets is underway. Over 100 extrasolar giant planets are known to orbit nearby sun-like stars, including several in multiple-planet systems. These planetary systems are stepping stones for the search…
Follow the big stars! I review the theory of detection and parameter measurement of planetary systems by follow-up observations of ongoing microlensing events. Two parameters can generically be measured from the event itself: the…
With planets orbiting stars, a planetary mass function should not be seen as a low-mass extension of the stellar mass function, but a proper formalism needs to take care of the fact that the statistical properties of planet populations are…
The detection and characterization of Earth-like planet is approaching rapidly thanks to radial velocity surveys (HARPS), transit searches (Corot, Kepler) and space observatories dedicated to their characterization are already in…
The rapid analysis of ongoing gravitational microlensing events has been integral to the successful detection and characterisation of cool planets orbiting low mass stars in the Galaxy. In this paper we present an implementation of search…
Astrometry has long been a promising technique for exoplanet detection. At the theoretical limits, astrometry would allow for the detection of smaller planets than previously seen by current exoplanet search methods, but stellar activity…
The ultra-precise photometric space satellite MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of STars) will provide the first opportunity to measure the albedos and scattered light curves from known short-period extrasolar planets. Due to the…
Microlensing light curves are now being monitored with the precision required to detect small perturbations due to planetary companions of the primary lens. Microlensing is complementary to other planetary search techniques in its potential…
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…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
The study of extra-solar planetary systems has emerged as a new discipline of observational astronomy in the past few years with the discovery of a number of extra-solar planets. The properties of most of these extra-solar planets were not…
In this paper we discuss how we can read a planets spectrum to assess its habitability and search for the signatures of a biosphere. After a decade rich in giant exoplanet detections, observation techniques have now reached the ability to…
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…
If a source star is gravitationally microlensed by a multiple lens system, the resulting light curve can have significant deviations from the standard form of a single lens event. The chance to produce significant deviations becomes…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
We investigate lens orbital motion in astrometric microlensing and its detectability. In microlensing events, the light centroid shift in the source trajectory (the astrometric trajectory) falls off much more slowly than the light…
Planet detection through microlensing is usually limited by a well-known degeneracy in the Einstein timescale $t_E$, which prevents mass and distance of the lens to be univocally determined. It has been shown that a satellite in…
Interest among astronomers in the detection of extra-solar planets is accelerating with the growing realization that it may soon be technically feasible. The ongoing renaissance in telescope construction and the anticipated launches of new…
Astrometric monitoring of stars provides a promising method for discovery of low-mass planets around nearby Sun-like stars. The astronomical community has proposed several telescopes designed to perform high-precision astrometric…