相关论文: Characterization of extrasolar terrestrial planets…
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…
Water and land surfaces on a planet interact with gases in the atmosphere and with radiation from the star. These interactions define the environments that prevail on the planet, some of which may be more amenable to prebiotic chemistry,…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
The long-term habitability of Earth-like planets requires low orbital eccentricities. A secular perturbation from a distant stellar companion is a very important mechanism in exciting planetary eccentricities, as many of the extrasolar…
I present an homogeneous determination of the physical properties of 14 transiting extrasolar planetary systems for which good data are available. The input quantities for each system are the results of the light curve analyses (Paper 1),…
In the last decade, about a dozen giant exoplanets have been directly imaged in the IR as companions to young stars. With photometry and spectroscopy of these planets in hand from new extreme coronagraphic instruments such as SPHERE at VLT…
Characterizing the surfaces of rocky exoplanets via the scattered light will be an essential challenge to investigate the existence of life on habitable exoplanets. We present a simple reconstruction method for fractional areas of different…
Several processes can cause the shape of an extrasolar giant planet's shadow, as viewed in transit, to depart from circular. In addition to rotational effects, cloud formation, non-homogenous haze production and movement, and dynamical…
The ancestor philosophers' dream of thousands of new worlds is finally realised: about 3500 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the neighborhood of our Sun. Most of them are very different from those we used to know in our Solar…
Resolving spatially-varying exoplanet features from single-point light curves is essential for determining whether Earth-like worlds harbor geological features and/or climate systems that influence habitability. To evaluate the feasibility…
Visible and near-infrared spectra of transiting hot Jupiter planets have recently been observed, revealing some of the atmospheric constituents of their atmospheres. In the near future, it is probable that primary and secondary eclipse…
Stellar activity is a potential important limitation to the detection of low mass extrasolar planets with indirect methods (RV, photometry, astrometry). In previous papers, using the Sun as a proxy, we investigated the impact of stellar…
Context. Clouds have already been detected in exoplanetary atmospheres. They play crucial roles in a planet's atmosphere and climate and can also create ambiguities in the determination of atmospheric parameters such as trace gas mixing…
The weak orbital-phase dependent reflection signal of an exoplanet contains information on the planet surface, such as the distribution of continents and oceans on terrestrial planets. This light curve is usually studied in the time domain,…
Mountain ranges, volcanoes, trenches, and craters are common on rocky bodies throughout the Solar System, and we might we expect the same for rocky exoplanets. With ever larger telescopes under design and a growing need to not just detect…
We have developed a characterization of the geological evolution of the Earths atmosphere and surface in order to model the observable spectra of an Earth-like planet through its geological history. These calculations are designed to guide…
We revisit the possibility of detecting an extrasolar planet around a background star as it crosses the fold caustic of a foreground binary lens. During such an event, the planet's flux can be magnified by a factor of ~100 or more. The…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
This whitepaper discusses the diversity of exoplanets that could be detected by future observations, so that comparative exoplanetology can be performed in the upcoming era of large space-based flagship missions. The primary focus will be…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…