140 research outputs found
Astrokit -- an Efficient Program for High-Precision Differential CCD Photometry and Search for Variable Stars
Having a need to perform differential photometry for tens of thousands stars
in a several square degrees field, we developed Astrokit program. The software
corrects the star brightness variations caused by variations of atmospheric
transparency: to this end, the program selects for each star an individual
ensemble of reference stars having similar magnitudes and positions in the
frame. With ten or more reference stars in the ensemble, the differences
between their spectral types and the spectral type of the object studied become
unimportant. Astrokit searches for variable stars using Robust Median
Statistics criterion, which allows candidate variables to be selected more
efficiently than by analyzing the standard deviation of star magnitudes. The
software allows very precise automatic analysis of long inhomogeneous sets of
photometric observations of a large number of objects to be performed, making
it possible to find "hot Jupiter" type exoplanet transits and low-amplitude
variables. We describe the algorithm of the program and the results of its
application to reduce the data of the photometric sky survey in Cygnus as well
as observations of the open cluster NGC188 and the transit of the exoplanet
WASP-11 b / HAT-P-10 b, performed with the MASTER-II-URAL telescope of the
Kourovka Astronomical Observatory of the Ural Federal University.Comment: to be published in Astrophysical Bulletin, Vol. 69, No.
Ground-based follow-up observations of TRAPPIST-1 transits in the near-infrared
The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system is a favorable target for the atmospheric
characterization of temperate earth-sized exoplanets by means of transmission
spectroscopy with the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). A possible
obstacle to this technique could come from the photospheric heterogeneity of
the host star that could affect planetary signatures in the transit
transmission spectra. To constrain further this possibility, we gathered an
extensive photometric data set of 25 TRAPPIST-1 transits observed in the
near-IR J band (1.2 m) with the UKIRT and the AAT, and in the NB2090 band
(2.1 m) with the VLT during the period 2015-2018. In our analysis of these
data, we used a special strategy aiming to ensure uniformity in our
measurements and robustness in our conclusions. We reach a photometric
precision of (RMS of the residuals), and we detect no significant
temporal variations of transit depths of TRAPPIST-1 b, c, e, and g over the
period of three years. The few transit depths measured for planets d and f hint
towards some level of variability, but more measurements will be required for
confirmation. Our depth measurements for planets b and c disagree with the
stellar contamination spectra originating from the possible existence of bright
spots of temperature 4500 K. We report updated transmission spectra for the six
inner planets of the system which are globally flat for planets b and g and
some structures are seen for planets c, d, e, and f.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRA
Comparative performance of selected variability detection techniques in photometric time series
Photometric measurements are prone to systematic errors presenting a
challenge to low-amplitude variability detection. In search for a
general-purpose variability detection technique able to recover a broad range
of variability types including currently unknown ones, we test 18 statistical
characteristics quantifying scatter and/or correlation between brightness
measurements. We compare their performance in identifying variable objects in
seven time series data sets obtained with telescopes ranging in size from a
telephoto lens to 1m-class and probing variability on time-scales from minutes
to decades. The test data sets together include lightcurves of 127539 objects,
among them 1251 variable stars of various types and represent a range of
observing conditions often found in ground-based variability surveys. The real
data are complemented by simulations. We propose a combination of two indices
that together recover a broad range of variability types from photometric data
characterized by a wide variety of sampling patterns, photometric accuracies,
and percentages of outlier measurements. The first index is the interquartile
range (IQR) of magnitude measurements, sensitive to variability irrespective of
a time-scale and resistant to outliers. It can be complemented by the ratio of
the lightcurve variance to the mean square successive difference, 1/h, which is
efficient in detecting variability on time-scales longer than the typical time
interval between observations. Variable objects have larger 1/h and/or IQR
values than non-variable objects of similar brightness. Another approach to
variability detection is to combine many variability indices using principal
component analysis. We present 124 previously unknown variable stars found in
the test data.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables; accepted to MNRAS; for additional
plots, see http://scan.sai.msu.ru/~kirx/var_idx_paper
First results of the Kourovka Planet Search: discovery of transiting exoplanet candidates in the first three target fields
We present the first results of our search for transiting exoplanet
candidates as part of the Kourovka Planet Search (KPS) project. The primary
objective of the project is to search for new hot Jupiters which transit their
host stars, mainly in the Galactic plane, in the magnitude range of 11 to
14 mag. Our observations were performed with the telescope of the MASTER
robotic network, installed at the Kourovka astronomical observatory of the Ural
Federal University (Russia), and the Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph,
installed at the private Acton Sky Portal Observatory (USA). As test
observations, we observed three celestial fields of size deg
during the period from 2012 to 2015. As a result, we discovered four transiting
exoplanet candidates among the 39000 stars of the input catalogue. In this
paper, we provide the description of the project and analyse additional
photometric, spectral, and speckle interferometric observations of the
discovered transiting exoplanet candidates. Three of the four transiting
exoplanet candidates are most likely astrophysical false positives, while the
nature of the fourth (most promising) candidate remains to be ascertained.
Also, we propose an alternative observing strategy that could increase the
project's exoplanet haul.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figures; Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society 201
WASP-189b: an ultra-hot Jupiter transiting the bright A star HR 5599 in a polar orbit
We report the discovery of WASP-189b: an ultra-hot Jupiter in a 2.72-d
transiting orbit around the A star WASP-189 (HR 5599). We detected
periodic dimmings in the star's lightcurve, first with the WASP-South survey
facility then with the TRAPPIST-South telescope. We confirmed that a planet is
the cause of those dimmings via line-profile tomography and radial-velocity
measurements using the HARPS and CORALIE spectrographs. Those reveal WASP-189b
to be an ultra-hot Jupiter ( = 2.13 0.28 ;
= 1.374 0.082 ) in a polar orbit (; ) around a rapidly rotating
A6IV-V star ( = 8000 100 K; 100
km\, s). We calculate a predicted equilibrium temperature of = 2641 34 K, assuming zero albedo and efficient redistribution,
which is the third hottest for the known exoplanets. WASP-189 is the brightest
known host of a transiting hot Jupiter and the third-brightest known host of
any transiting exoplanet. We note that of the eight hot-Jupiter systems with
7000 K, seven have strongly misaligned orbits, and two of the
three systems with 8000 K have polar orbits (the third is
aligned).Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. 10 pages, 9 figures, 3 table
Global analysis of the TRAPPIST Ultra-Cool Dwarf Transit Survey
ABSTRACT
We conducted a global analysis of the TRAPPIST Ultra-Cool Dwarf Transit Survey – a prototype of the SPECULOOS transit search conducted with the TRAPPIST-South robotic telescope in Chile from 2011 to 2017 – to estimate the occurrence rate of close-in planets such as TRAPPIST-1b orbiting ultra-cool dwarfs. For this purpose, the photometric data of 40 nearby ultra-cool dwarfs were reanalysed in a self-consistent and fully automated manner starting from the raw images. The pipeline developed specifically for this task generates differential light curves, removes non-planetary photometric features and stellar variability, and searches for transits. It identifies the transits of TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c without any human intervention. To test the pipeline and the potential output of similar surveys, we injected planetary transits into the light curves on a star-by-star basis and tested whether the pipeline is able to detect them. The achieved photometric precision enables us to identify Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool dwarfs as validated by the injection tests. Our planet-injection simulation further suggests a lower limit of 10 per cent on the occurrence rate of planets similar to TRAPPIST-1b with a radius between 1 and 1.3 R⊕ and the orbital period between 1.4 and 1.8 d.</jats:p
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