CoRoT pictures transiting exoplanets

Transiting exoplanets from the CoRoT space mission ? VI. CoRoT-Exo-3b: The first secure inhabitant of the brown-dwarf desert

Context. The CoRoT space mission routinely provides high-precision photometric measurements of thousands of stars that have been continuously observed for months. Aims. The discovery and characterization of the first very massive transiting planetary companion with a short orbital period is reported. Methods. A series of 34 transits was detected in the CoRoT light curve of an F3V star, observed...

Comparative Habitability of Transiting Exoplanets

Exoplanet habitability is traditionally assessed by comparing a planet’s semi-major axis to the location of its host star’s “habitable zone,” the shell around a star for which Earth-like planets can possess liquid surface water. The Kepler space telescope has discovered numerous planet candidates near the habitable zone, and many more are expected from missions such as K2, TESS and PLATO. These...

High Precision Photometry of Transiting Exoplanets

Observations of Transiting Exoplanets with Differential Photometry

Preliminary observations and computational methods for analysis are presented for observing celestial objects with time-varying intensity, in particular transiting exoplanets. Transits occur when a planet orbiting a star other than the sun (an exoplanet) passes between the Earth and the host star, slightly dimming the apparent intensity of the star. CCD images of the host star of one such exopl...

Improved modeling of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for transiting exoplanets

We present an improved formula for the anomalous radial velocity of the star during planetary transits due to the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect. The improvement comes from a more realistic description of the stellar absorption line profiles, taking into account stellar rotation, macroturbulence, thermal broadening, pressure broadening, and instrumental broadening. Although the formula is deri...