6 research outputs found
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
KPS-1b: The First Transiting Exoplanet Discovered Using an Amateur Astronomer's Wide-field CCD Data
We report the discovery of the transiting hot Jupiter KPS-1b. This exoplanet orbits a V = 13.0 K1-type main sequence star every 1.7 days, has a mass of 1.090 (+0.086 -0.087) MJup and a radius of 1.03 (+0.13 -0.12) RJup. The discovery was made by the prototype Kourovka Planet Search (KPS) project, which used wide-field CCD data gathered by an amateur astronomer using readily available and relatively affordable equipment. Here we describe the equipment and observing technique used for the discovery of KPS-1b, its characterization with spectroscopic observations by the SOPHIE spectrograph and with high-precision photometry obtained with 1m class telescopes. We also outline the KPS project evolution into the Galactic Plane eXoplanet survey. The discovery of KPS-1b represents a new major step of the contribution of amateur astronomers to the burgeoning field of exoplanetology