A complete and in-depth review of exoplanet research, covering the discovery methods, physics and theoretical background.

This book is dedicated to all the people interested in the CoRoT mission and the beautiful data that were delivered during its six year duration. Either amateurs, professional, young or senior researchers, they will find treasures not only at the time of this publication but also in the future twenty or thirty years. It presents the data in their final version, explains how they have been obtained, how to handle them, describes the tools necessary to understand them, and where to find them. It also highlights the most striking first results obtained up to now. CoRoT has opened several unexpected directions of research and certainly new ones still to be discovered.

The study of exoplanets is one of the most vibrant fields of astrophysics today. Precise radial velocity (RV, or Doppler) measurements created the field by discovering the first exoplanets. Although employed for more than 30 years, RV measurements are still relevant today; when used with the transit method it provides the first characterization of exoplanets in terms of its mass, radius, and bulk density. These provide the first clues as to the internal structure of the exoplanet. With this text, Hatzes provides a deep understanding of the Doppler method, including how to achieve RV measurement precision, as well as the challenges, limitations, and potential of the technique. It also covers other aspects of the method such instrumentation, wavelength calibration, finding periodic signals in RV time series, signal interpretation, and Keplerian orbits. It's an essential reference for researchers and graduate students in the field of exoplanets, and additionally stellar spectroscopists and instrumentalists.

Driven by discoveries, and enabled by leaps in technology and imagination, our understanding of the universe has changed dramatically during the course of the last few decades. The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are making new connections to physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Based on a broad and comprehensive survey of scientific opportunities, infrastructure, and organization in a national and international context, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics outlines a plan for ground- and space- based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010's. Realizing these scientific opportunities is contingent upon maintaining and strengthening the foundations of the research enterprise including technological development, theory, computation and data handling, laboratory experiments, and human resources. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics proposes enhancing innovative but moderate-cost programs in space and on the ground that will enable the community to respond rapidly and flexibly to new scientific discoveries. The book recommends beginning construction on survey telescopes in space and on the ground to investigate the nature of dark energy, as well as the next generation of large ground-based giant optical telescopes and a new class of space-based gravitational observatory to observe the merging of distant black holes and precisely test theories of gravity. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics recommends a balanced and executable program that will support research surrounding the most profound questions about the cosmos. The discoveries ahead will facilitate the search for habitable planets, shed light on dark energy and dark matter, and aid our understanding of the history of the universe and how the earliest stars and galaxies formed. The book is a useful resource for agencies supporting the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the Congressional committees with jurisdiction over those agencies, the scientific community, and the public.

IAU S258 discusses the problem of estimating ages of stars and stellar populations, a difficult challenge in astrophysics.

This book presents an up-to-date collection of reviews and contributed articles in the field of ultraviolet astronomy. Its content has been mainly motivated by the recent access to the rest frame UV light of distant red galaxies, gained through large optical facilities. This driveway has derived in a renewed interest on the stars that presumably dominate or have important effects on the integrated UV properties of evolved systems of the nearby and faraway Universe. The topics included in this volume extend from the fresh spectroscopic analyses of high redshift early-type galaxies observed with the 8-10m class telescopes to the fundamental outcomes from various satellites, from the long-lived International Ultraviolet Explorer to current facilities, such as the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. This is one of the few volumes published in recent years devoted to UV astronomical research and the only one dedicated to the properties of evolved stellar populations at these wavelengths. This contemporary panorama will be an invaluable resource in the preparation of the next planned space missions, such as the World Space Observatory and the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope.