Publications (28)
On the potential of transit surveys in star clusters: Impact of correlated noise and radial velocity follow-up
Suzanne Aigrain, Frederic Pont
We present an extension of the formalism recently proposed by Pepper & Gaudi to evaluate the yield of transit surveys in homogeneous stellar systems, incorporating the impact of co…
Photometric searches for transiting planets: results and challenges
Frederic Pont
Ground-based photometric surveys have led to the discovery of six transiting exoplanets, five of which were detected by the OGLE survey. The FLAMES multi-object spectrograph on the…
Isochrone ages for field dwarfs: method and application to the age-metallicity relation
Frederic Pont, Laurent Eyer
A new method is presented to compute age estimates from theoretical isochrones using temperature, luminosity and metallicity data for individual stars. Based on Bayesian probabilit…
The thermal emission of the exoplanets WASP-1b and WASP-2b
Peter J. Wheatley, Andrew Collier Cameron, Joseph Harrington +24
We present a comparative study of the thermal emission of the transiting exoplanets WASP-1b and WASP-2b using the Spitzer Space Telescope. The two planets have very similar masses…
The Chemical Enrichment History of the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy from the Infrared Calcium Triplet
Frederic Pont, Robert Zinn, Carme Gallart +2
Near infrared spectra were obtained for 117 red giants in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy with the FORS1 spectrograph on the VLT, in order to study the metallicity distribution…
Determining Eccentricities of Transiting Planets: A Divide in the Mass-Period Plane
Frederic Pont, Nawal Husnoo, Tsevi Mazeh +1
The two dominant features in the distribution of orbital parameters for close-in exoplanets are the prevalence of circular orbits for very short periods, and the observation that p…
The Monitor project: JW 380 -- a 0.26, 0.15 Msol pre main sequence eclipsing binary in the Orion Nebula Cluster
Jonathan Irwin, Suzanne Aigrain, Simon Hodgkin +14
We report the discovery of a low-mass (0.26 +/- 0.02, 0.15 +/- 0.01 Msol) pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary with a 5.3 day orbital period. JW 380 was detected as part of a high-ca…
A new look at NICMOS transmission spectroscopy of HD189733, GJ-436 and XO-1: no conclusive evidence for molecular features
Neale P. Gibson, Frederic Pont, Suzanne Aigrain
We present a re-analysis of archival HST/NICMOS transmission spectroscopy of three exoplanet systems; HD 189733, GJ-436 and XO-1. Detections of several molecules, including H20, CH…
Photometric Follow-up Observations of the Transiting Neptune-Mass Planet GJ 436b
Avi Shporer, Tsevi Mazeh, Frederic Pont +4
This paper presents multi-band photometric follow-up observations of the Neptune-mass transiting planet GJ 436b, consisting of 5 new ground-based transit light curves obtained in M…
The `666' collaboration on OGLE transits: I. Accurate radius of the planets OGLE-TR-10b and OGLE-TR-56b with VLT deconvolution photometry
Frederic Pont, Claire Moutou, Michael Gillon +14
Transiting planets are essential to study the structure and evolution of extra-solar planets. For that purpose, it is important to measure precisely the radius of these planets. He…
Orbital eccentricity of WASP-12 and WASP-14 from new radial-velocity monitoring with SOPHIE
Nawal Husnoo, Frederic Pont, Guillaume Hebrard +9
As part of the long-term radial velocity monitoring of known transiting planets -- designed to measure orbital eccentricities, spin-orbit alignments and further planetary companion…
HAT-P-9b: A Low Density Planet Transiting a Moderately Faint F star
Avi Shporer, Gaspar A. Bakos, Francois Bouchy +14
We report the discovery of a planet transiting a moderately faint (V=12.3 mag) late F star, with an orbital period of 3.92289 +/- 0.00004 days. From the transit light curve and rad…
Spitzer Infrared Observations and Independent Validation of the Transiting Super-Earth CoRoT-7b
Francois Fressin, Guillermo Torres, Frederic Pont +8
The detection and characterization of the first transiting super-Earth, CoRoT-7 b, has required an unprecedented effort in terms of telescope time and analysis. Although the star d…
A new look at NICMOS transmission spectroscopy: no conclusive evidence for molecular features
Neale P. Gibson, Frederic Pont, Suzanne Aigrain
We present a re-analysis of archival HST/NICMOS transmission spectroscopy of the exoplanet system, HD 189733, from which detections of several molecules have been claimed. As expec…
Empirical evidence for tidal evolution in transiting planetary systems
Frederic Pont
Most transiting planets orbit very close to their parent star, causing strong tidal forces between the two bodies. Tidal interaction can modify the dynamics of the system through o…
Star-Planet Interactions
Evgenya Shkolnik, Suzanne Aigrain, Steven Cranmer +6
Much effort has been invested in recent years, both observationally and theoretically, to understand the interacting processes taking place in planetary systems consisting of a hot…
Re-assessing the radial-velocity evidence for planets around CoRoT-7
Frederic Pont, Suzanne Aigrain, Shay Zucker
CoRoT-7 is an 11th magnitude K-star whose light curve shows transits with depth of 0.3 mmag and a period of 0.854 d, superimposed on variability at the 1% level, due to the modulat…
Potential of Photometric Searches for Transiting Planets
Frederic Pont, the ISSI Working Group on Transiting Planets
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 tu…
The effect of red noise on planetary transit detection
Frederic Pont, Shay Zucker, Didier Queloz
Since the discovery of short-period exoplanets a decade ago, photometric surveys have been recognized as a feasible method to detect transiting hot Jupiters. Many transit surveys a…
A continuum from clear to cloudy hot-Jupiter exoplanets without primordial water depletion
David K. Sing, Jonathan J. Fortney, Nikolay Nikolov +18
Thousands of transiting exoplanets have been discovered, but spectral analysis of their atmospheres has so far been dominated by a small number of exoplanets and data spanning rela…
The Monitor project: Searching for occultations in young open clusters
Suzanne Aigrain, Simon Hodgkin, Jonathan Irwin +5
The Monitor project is a photometric monitoring survey of nine young (1-200Myr) clusters in the solar neighbourhood to search for eclipses by very low mass stars and brown dwarfs a…
The Effects of Irradiation on Hot Jovian Atmospheres: Heat Redistribution and Energy Dissipation
Rosalba Perna, Kevin Heng, Frederic Pont
Hot Jupiters, due to the proximity to their parent stars, are subjected to a strong irradiating flux which governs their radiative and dynamical properties. We compute a suite of 3…
Precision photometry for planetary transits
Frederic Pont, Claire Moutou
We review the state of the art in follow-up photometry for planetary transit searches. Three topics are discussed: (1) Photometric monitoring of planets discovered by radial veloci…
An intriguing correlation between the masses and periods of the transiting planets
Tsevi Mazeh, Shay Zucker, Frederic Pont
We point out an intriguing relation between the masses of the transiting planets and their orbital periods. For the six currently known transiting planets, the data are consistent…
Circumstellar disks and planets. Science cases for next-generation optical/infrared long-baseline interferometers
Sebastian Wolf, Fabien Malbet, Richard Alexander +10
We present a review of the interplay between the evolution of circumstellar disks and the formation of planets, both from the perspective of theoretical models and dedicated observ…
The Cepheid Distance Scale after Hipparcos
Frederic Pont
More than two hundred classical cepheids were measured by the Hipparcos astrometric satellite, making possible a geometrical calibration of the cepheid distance scale. However, the…
ELODIE metallicity-biased search for transiting Hot Jupiters II. A very hot Jupiter transiting the bright K star HD189733
Francois Bouchy, Stephane Udry, Michel Mayor +9
Among the 160 known exoplanets, mainly detected in large radial-velocity surveys, only 8 have a characterization of their actual mass and radius thanks to the two complementary met…
The "missing link": a 4-day period transiting exoplanet around OGLE-TR-111
Frederic Pont, Francois Bouchy, Didier Queloz +4
We report the discovery of a transiting hot Jupiter around OGLE-TR-111, from our radial velocity follow-up of OGLE transiting candidates in Carina. The planet has a mass of 0.53 +-…