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Since the discovery of the transiting super-Earth CoRoT-7b, several investigations have yielded different results for the number and masses of planets present in the system, mainly owing to the star's high level of activity. We re-observed CoRoT-7 in January 2012 with both HARPS and CoRoT, so that we now have the benefit of simultaneous radial-velocity and photometric data. This allows us to use the offtransit variations in the star's light curve to estimate the radial-velocity variations induced by the suppression of convective blueshift and the flux blocked by starspots. To account for activity-related effects in the radial-velocities which do not have a photometric signature, we also include an additional activity term in the radial-velocity model, which we treat as a Gaussian process with the same covariance properties (and hence the same frequency structure) as the light curve. Our model was incorporated into a Monte Carlo Markov Chain in order to make a precise determination of the orbits of CoRoT-7b and CoRoT-7c. We measure the masses of planets b and c to be 4.73 ± 0.95 M ⊕ and 13.56 ± 1.08 M ⊕ , respectively. The density of CoRoT-7b is (6.61 ± 1.72)(R p /1.58 R ⊕ ) −3 g.cm −3 , which is compatible with a rocky composition. We search for evidence of an additional planet d, identified by previous authors with a period close to 9 days. We are not able to confirm the existence of a planet with this orbital period, which is close to the second harmonic of the stellar rotation at ∼ 7.9 days. Using Bayesian model selection we find that a model with two planets plus activity-induced variations is most favoured.

We report on the masses, sizes, and orbits of the planets orbiting 22 Kepler stars. There are 49 planet candidates around these stars, including 42 detected through transits and 7 revealed by precise Doppler measurements of the host stars. Based on an analysis of the Kepler brightness measurements, along with high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy, Doppler spectroscopy, and (for 11 stars) asteroseismology, we establish low false-positive probabilities (FPPs) for all of the transiting planets (41 of 42 have an FPP under 1%), and we constrain their sizes and masses. Most of the transiting planets are smaller than three times the size of Earth. For 16 planets, the Doppler signal was securely detected, providing a direct measurement of the planet's mass. For the other 26 planets we provide either marginal mass measurements or upper limits to their masses and densities; in many cases we can rule out a rocky composition. We identify six planets with densities above 5 g cm −3 , suggesting a mostly rocky interior for them. Indeed, the only planets that are compatible with a purely rocky composition are smaller than ∼2 R ⊕. Larger planets evidently contain a larger fraction of low-density material (H, He, and H 2 O).

While giant extrasolar planets have been studied for more than two decades now, there are still some open questions as to their dominant formation and migration processes, as well as to their atmospheric evolution in different stellar environments. In this paper, we study a sample of giant transiting exoplanets detected by the Kepler telescope with orbital periods up to 400 days. We first defined a sample of 129 giant-planet candidates that we followed up with the SOPHIE spectrograph (OHP, France) in a 6-year radial velocity campaign. This allowed us to unveil the nature of these candidates and to measure a false-positive rate of 54.6 ± 6.5% for giant-planet candidates orbiting within 400 days of period. Based on a sample of confirmed or likely planets, we then derived the occurrence rates of giant planets in different ranges of orbital periods. The overall occurrence rate of giant planets within 400 days is 4.6 ± 0.6%. We recovered, for the first time in the Kepler data, the different populations of giant planets reported by radial velocity surveys. Comparing these rates with other yields, we find that the occurrence rate of giant planets is lower only for hot Jupiters but not for the longer-period planets. We also derive a first measurement of the occurrence rate of brown dwarfs in the brown-dwarf desert with a value of 0.29 ± 0.17%. Finally, we discuss the physical properties of the giant planets in our sample. We confirm that giant planets receiving moderate irradiation are not inflated, but we find that they are on average smaller than predicted by formation and evolution models. In this regime of low-irradiated giant planets, we find a possible correlation between their bulk density and the iron abundance of the host star, which needs more detections to be confirmed.

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Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet's birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25-7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and welldefined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phasecurve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10-100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H 2 O, CO 2 , CH 4 NH 3 , HCN, H 2 S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performedusing conservative estimates of mission performance and a

The false-positive probability (FPP) of Kepler transiting candidates is a key value for statistical studies of candidate properties. A previous investigation of the stellar population in the Kepler field has provided an estimate for the FPP of less than 5% for most of the candidates. We report here the results of our radial velocity observations on a sample of 46 Kepler candidates with a transit depth greater than 0.4%, orbital period less than 25 days and host star brighter than Kepler magnitude 14.7. We used the SOPHIE spectrograph mounted on the 1.93-m telescope at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence to establish the nature of the transiting candidates. In this sample, we found five undiluted eclipsing binaries, two brown dwarfs, six diluted eclipsing binaries, and nine new transiting planets that complement the 11 already published planets. The remaining 13 candidates were not followed-up or remain unsolved due to photon noise limitation or lack of observations. From these results we computed the FPP for Kepler close-in giant candidates to be 34.8% ± 6.5%. We aimed to investigate the variation of the FPP for giant candidates with the longer orbital periods and found that it should be constant for orbital periods between 10 and 200 days. This significantly disagrees with the previous estimates. We discuss the reasons for this discrepancy and the possible extension of this work toward smaller planet candidates. Finally, taking the false-positive rate into account, we refined the occurrence rate of hot Jupiters from the Kepler data.

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