The SuperWASP Cameras are wide-field imaging systems sited at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, and the Sutherland Station of the South African Astronomical Observatory. Each instrument has a field of view of some ~482 square degrees with an angular scale of 13.7 arcsec per pixel, and is capable of delivering photometry with accuracy better than 1% for objects having V ~ 7.0 - 11.5. Lower quality data for objects brighter than V ~15.0 are stored in the project archive. The systems, while designed to monitor fields with high cadence, are capable of surveying the entire visible sky every 40 minutes. Depending on the observational strategy, the data rate can be up to 100GB per night. We have produced a robust, largely automatic reduction pipeline and advanced archive which are used to serve the data products to the consortium members. The main science aim of these systems is to search for bright transiting exo-planets systems suitable for spectroscopic followup observations. The first 6 month season of SuperWASP-North observations produced lightcurves of ~6.7 million objects with 12.9 billion data points.Comment: 42 pages, 2 plates, 5 figures PASP in pres

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We report on the discovery of WASP-12b, a new transiting extrasolar planet with R pl = 1.79 +0.09 −0.09 R J and M pl = 1.41 +0.10 −0.10 M J . The planet and host star properties were derived from a Monte Carlo Markov chain analysis of the transit photometry and radial velocity data. Furthermore, by comparing the stellar spectrum with theoretical spectra and stellar evolution models, we determined that the host star is a supersolar metallicity ([M/H]= 0.3 +0.05 −0.15 ), late-F (T eff = 6300 +200 −100 K) star which is evolving off the zero-age main sequence. The planet has an equilibrium temperature of T eq = 2516 K caused by its very short period orbit (P = 1.09 days) around the hot, twelfth magnitude host star. WASP-12b has the largest radius of any transiting planet yet detected. It is also the most heavily irradiated and the shortest period planet in the literature.

We present the results of photometric surveys for stellar rotation in the Hyades and in Praesepe, using data obtained as part of the SuperWASP exoplanetary transit‐search programme. We determined accurate rotation periods for more than 120 sources whose cluster membership was confirmed by common proper motion and colour–magnitude fits to the clusters’ isochrones. This allowed us to determine the effect of magnetic braking on a wide range of spectral types for expected ages of ∼600 Myr for the Hyades and Praesepe. Both clusters show a tight and nearly linear relation between J−Ks colour and rotation period in the F, G and K spectral range. This confirms that loss of angular momentum was significant enough that stars with strongly different initial rotation rates have converged to the same rotation period for a given mass, by the ages of Hyades and Praesepe. In the case of the Hyades, our colour–period sequence extends well into the M dwarf regime and shows a steep increase in the scatter of the colour–period relation, with identification of numerous rapid rotators from ∼0.5 M⊙ down to the lowest masses probed by our survey (∼0.25 M⊙). This provides crucial constraints on the rotational braking time‐scales and further clears the way to use gyrochronology as an accurate age measurement tool for main‐sequence stars.

We have used a model of magnetic accretion to investigate the rotational equilibria of magnetic cataclysmic variables (mCVs). The results of our numerical simulations demonstrate that there is a range of parameter space in the P spin =P orb versus 1 plane at which rotational equilibrium occurs. This has allowed us to calculate the theoretical histogram describing the distribution of mCVs as a function of P spin =P orb . We show that this agrees with the observed distribution, assuming that the number of systems as a function of white dwarf magnetic moment is distributed approximately according to N 1 ð Þd 1 / À1 1 d 1 . The rotational equilibria also allow us to infer approximate values for the magnetic moments of all known intermediate polars. We predict that intermediate polars with 1 k 5 ; 10 33 G cm 3 and P orb > 3 hr will evolve into polars, while those with 1 P 5 ; 10 33 G cm 3 and P orb > 3 hr will either evolve into low field strength polars that are (presumably) unobservable, and possibly EUV emitters, or, if their fields are buried by high accretion rates, evolve into conventional polars, once their magnetic fields resurface when the mass accretion rate reduces. We speculate that EX Hya-like systems may have low magnetic field strength secondaries and so avoid synchronization. Finally, we note that the equilibria we have investigated correspond to a variety of different types of accretion flow, including disklike accretion at small P spin =P orb values, streamlike accretion at intermediate P spin =P orb values, and accretion fed from a ring at the outer edge of the white dwarf Roche lobe at higher P spin =P orb values.

We report the discovery of WASP‐3b, the third transiting exoplanet to be discovered by the WASP and SOPHIE collaboration. WASP‐3b transits its host star USNO‐B1.0 1256−0285133 every 1.846 834 ± 0.000 002 d. Our high‐precision radial velocity measurements present a variation with amplitude characteristic of a planetary‐mass companion and in phase with the light curve. Adaptive optics imaging shows no evidence for nearby stellar companions, and line‐bisector analysis excludes faint, unresolved binarity and stellar activity as the cause of the radial velocity variations. We make a preliminary spectroscopic analysis of the host star and find it to have Teff= 6400 ± 100 K and log  g= 4.25 ± 0.05 which suggests it is most likely an unevolved main‐sequence star of spectral type F7‐8V. Our simultaneous modelling of the transit photometry and reflex motion of the host leads us to derive a mass of 1.76+0.08−0.14MJ and radius 1.31+0.07−0.14RJ for WASP‐3b. The proximity and relative temperature of the host star suggests that WASP‐3b is one of the hottest exoplanets known, and thus has the potential to place stringent constraints on exoplanet atmospheric models.

Abstract. We report new radial velocity observations of GP Vel / HD 77581, the optical companion to the eclipsing X-ray pulsar Vela X-1. Using data spanning more than two complete orbits of the system, we detect evidence for tidally induced nonradial oscillations on the surface of GP Vel, apparent as peaks in the power spectrum of the residuals to the radial velocity curve fit. By removing the effect of these oscillations (to first order) and binning the radial velocities, we have determined the semiamplitude of the radial velocity curve of GP Vel to be K o = 22.6 ± 1.5 km s −1 . Given the accurately measured semi-amplitude of the pulsar's orbit, the mass ratio of the system is 0.081 ± 0.005. We are able to set upper and lower limits on the masses of the component stars as follows. Assuming GP Vel fills its Roche lobe then the inclination angle of the system, i, is 70.1• ± 2.6• . In this case we obtain the masses of the two stars as M x = 2.27 ± 0.17 M for the neutron star and M o = 27.9 ± 1.3 M for GP Vel. Conversely, assuming the inclination angle is i = 90• , the ratio of the radius of GP Vel to the radius of its Roche lobe is β = 0.89 ± 0.03 and the masses of the two stars are M x = 1.88 ± 0.13 M and M o = 23.1 ± 0.2 M . A range of solutions between these two sets of limits is also possible, corresponding to other combinations of i and β. In addition, we note that if the zero phase of the radial velocity curve is allowed as a free parameter, rather than constrained by the X-ray ephemeris, a significantly improved fit is obtained with an amplitude of 21.2 ± 0.7 km s −1 and a phase shift of 0.033 ± 0.007 in true anomaly. The apparent shift in the zero phase of the radial velocity curve may indicate the presence of an additional radial velocity component at the orbital period. This may be another manifestation of the tidally induced non-radial oscillations and provides an additional source of uncertainty in the determination of the orbital radial velocity amplitude.

We present a fast and efficient hybrid algorithm for selecting exoplanetary candidates from wide-field transit surveys. Our method is based on the widely used SysRem and Box LeastSquares (BLS) algorithms. Patterns of systematic error that are common to all stars on the frame are mapped and eliminated using the SysRem algorithm. The remaining systematic errors caused by spatially localized flat-fielding and other errors are quantified using a boxcarsmoothing method. We show that the dimensions of the search-parameter space can be reduced greatly by carrying out an initial BLS search on a coarse grid of reduced dimensions, followed by Newton-Raphson refinement of the transit parameters in the vicinity of the most significant solutions. We illustrate the method's operation by applying it to data from one field of the SuperWASP survey, comprising 2300 observations of 7840 stars brighter than V = 13.0. We identify 11 likely transit candidates. We reject stars that exhibit significant ellipsoidal variations caused indicative of a stellar-mass companion. We use colours and proper motions from the Two Micron All Sky Survey and USNO-B1.0 surveys to estimate the stellar parameters and the companion radius. We find that two stars showing unambiguous transit signals pass all these tests, and so qualify for detailed high-resolution spectroscopic follow-up.