The HATNet and HATSouth Exoplanet Surveys

The Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) has been in operation since 2003, with the key science goal being the discovery and accurate characterization of transiting extrasolar planets (TEPs) around bright stars. Using six small, 11\,cm\ aperture, fully automated telescopes in Arizona and Hawaii, as of 2017 March, it has discovered and accurately characterized 67 such objects. The HATSouth network of telescopes has been in operation since 2009, using slightly larger, 18\,cm diameter optical tubes. It was the first global network of telescopes using identical instrumentation. With three premier sites spread out in longitude (Chile, Namibia, Australia), the HATSouth network permits round-the-clock observations of a 128 square arcdegree swath of the sky at any given time, weather permitting. As of this writing, HATSouth has discovered 36 transiting exoplanets. Many of the altogether ~100 HAT and HATSouth exoplanets were the first of their kind. They have been important contributors to the rapidly developing field of exoplanets, motivating and influencing observational techniques, theoretical studies, and also actively shaping future instrumentation for the detection and characterization of such objects.Comment: Invited review chapter, accepted for publication in "Handbook of Exoplanets", edited by H.J. Deeg and J.A. Belmonte, Springer Reference Work

Testing the Titius-Bode law predictions for Kepler multi-planet systems

We use three and half years of Kepler Long Cadence data to search for the 97 predicted planets of Bovaird & Lineweaver (2013) in 56 of the multi-planet systems, based on a general Titius-Bode relation. Our search yields null results in the majority of systems. We detect five planetary candidates around their predicted periods. We also find an additional transit signal beyond those predicted in these systems. We discuss the possibility that the remaining predicted planets are not detected in the Kepler data due to their non-coplanarity or small sizes. We find that the detection rate is beyond the lower boundary of the expected number of detections, which indicates that the prediction power of the TB relation in general extra solar planetary systems is questionable. Our analysis of the distribution of the adjacent period ratios of the systems suggests that the general Titius-Bode relation may over-predict the presence of planet pairs near the 3:2 resonance.Comment: Accepted by MNRA

Nagymennyiségű változócsillagászati észlelések feldolgozása és analízise = Reduction and analysis of large-scale variable star data sets

A következő három fő témakört vizsgáltuk: (a) periodikus tranzit detektálás és extraszolaris bolygók vizsgálata a HATNet es a WHAT automata távcsövek észlelései alapján; (b) a MACHO adatbázis RR Lyrae csillagainak periódus analízise; (c) pulzáló változócsillagok elméleti és empirikus vizsgálata. A következő eredményeket kaptuk. Téma (a): kis apertúrájú, teljesen automatizált távcsövek alkalmasak néhány millimagnitúdó pontosságú észlelésekre és forró Jupiterek (HJ-k) detektálására; a BLS algoritmusunk hatásos eszköz periodikus tranzitok keresésében; az adatfeldolgozás miatt fellépő szisztematikák kiszűrésének hatékony eszköze a TFA algoritmusunk; a HD 189733 HJ rendszer valójában egy hármas rendszer, K fő- es M másod-komponensekkel, valamint a főkomponens körül keringő bolygóval. Téma (b): az LMC-ben található alapmódusú RR Lyrae csillagok 12%-a mutat Blashko jelenséget. Ez az érték szignifikánsan magasabb, mint az újabb analizisünk alapján az első felhangú csillagokra kapott gyakoriság, amely a rendelkezésre álló adatok felhasználásával 7.5%-nak adódott. Téma (c): nincs ellentmondás az RR Lyrae és a Cepheida változók alapján a Baade-Wesselink módszer segítségével számított távolságok között. Az LMC távolságára konzisztens értékeket kaptunk; több irreguláris változó fénygörbéjének analizálása alapján további megerősítést kaptunk ezen csillagok kaotikus pulzációjára. | We have investigated the following three major topics: (a) periodic transit detection and extrasolar planetary studies based on large-scale photometric databases of the HATNet and WHAT automated telescopes; (b) frequency analysis of RR Lyrae stars in the MACHO database; (c) theoretical and empirical stellar pulsation studies. We obtained the following results. Topic (a): small aperture fully automated telescopes are able to gather few millimag precision photometric data and detect transits caused by hot Jupiters; our BLS algorithm is very efficient in searching for periodic transits; the effects of systematics due to errors in the data acquisition can be successfully filtered by our TFA algorithm; the hot Jupiter system HD 189733 is a triple system with a K primary and M secondary and the planet orbiting the primary. Topic (b): the incidence rate of the Blazhko stars pulsating in the fundamental mode is 12% in the LMC. This is significantly higher than that of the first overtone Blazhko stars (which is 7.5%, according to our new analysis of all available data. Topic (c): there is no contradiction between the distances derived by Baade-Wesselink analyses of RR Lyrae and Cepheid variables and they both yield consistent distances for the LMC; by analyzing the archival data of several irregular variables, we got further support for the presence of chaotic pulsations in these stars

VARTOOLS: A Program for Analyzing Astronomical Time-Series Data

This paper describes the VARTOOLS program, which is an open-source command-line utility, written in C, for analyzing astronomical time-series data, especially light curves. The program provides a general-purpose set of tools for processing light curves including signal identification, filtering, light curve manipulation, time conversions, and modeling and simulating light curves. Some of the routines implemented include the Generalized Lomb-Scargle periodogram, the Box-Least Squares transit search routine, the Analysis of Variance periodogram, the Discrete Fourier Transform including the CLEAN algorithm, the Weighted Wavelet Z-Transform, light curve arithmetic, linear and non-linear optimization of analytic functions including support for Markov Chain Monte Carlo analyses with non-trivial covariances, characterizing and/or simulating time-correlated noise, and the TFA and SYSREM filtering algorithms, among others. A mechanism is also provided for incorporating a user's own compiled processing routines into the program. VARTOOLS is designed especially for batch processing of light curves, including built-in support for parallel processing, making it useful for large time-domain surveys such as searches for transiting planets. Several examples are provided to illustrate the use of the program.Comment: 83 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Computing, code available at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~jhartman/vartools.htm

The elasticity of taxable income: estimates and flat tax predictions using the Hungarian tax changes in 2005

Many Central and Eastern European countries are adopting flat tax schemes in order to boost their economies and tax revenues. Though there are signs that some countries do manage to improve on both fronts, it is in general hard to distinguish the behavioral response to tax changes from the effect of increased tax enforcement. This paper addresses this gap by estimating the elasticity of taxable income in Hungary, one of the outliers in terms of not having a flat tax scheme. We analyze taxpayer behavior using a medium-scale tax reform episode in 2005, which changed marginal and average tax rates but kept enforcement constant. We employ a Tax and Financial Control Office (APEH) panel dataset between 2004 and 2005 with roughly 215,000 taxpayers. Our results suggest a relatively small but highly significant tax price elasticity of about 0.06 for the population earning above the minimum wage (around 70% of all taxpayers). This number increases to around 0.3 when we focus on the upper 20% of the income distribution, with some income groups exhibiting even higher elasticities (0.45). We first demonstrate that such an elasticity substantially modifies the response of government revenues to the 2004-2005 tax changes, and then quantify the impact of a hypothetical flat income tax scheme. Our calculations indicate that though there is room for a parallel improvement of budget revenues and after-tax income, those gains are modest (2% and 1.4%, respectively). Moreover, such a reform involves important adverse changes in income inequality, and its burden falls mostly on lower-middle income taxpayers