Directed follow-up strategy of low-cadence photometric surveys in search of transiting exoplanets - I. Bayesian approach for adaptive scheduling

Dzigan, Y.; Zucker, S.

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18876.x

Cited by 34 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…They can maximize the probability of detecting actual transit events by selecting follow-up times optimized to their current data and iteratively revise predictions as data accumulates. A Bayesian approach to such a strategy is described in Dzigan & Zucker (2011). In Fig.…”

Section: Detected Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

A sensitivity analysis of the WFCAM Transit Survey for short-period giant planets around M dwarfs

Kovács

Hodgkin

Sipőcz

et al. 2013

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The WFCAM Transit Survey (WTS) is a near-infrared transit survey running on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), designed to discover planets around M dwarfs. The WTS acts as a poor-seeing backup programme for the telescope, and represents the first dedicated wide-field near-infrared transit survey. Observations began in 2007 gathering J-band photometric observations in four (seasonal) fields. In this paper we present an analysis of the first of the WTS fields, covering an area of 1.6 square degrees. We describe the observing strategy of the WTS and the processing of the data to generate lightcurves. We describe the basic properties of our photometric data, and measure our sensitivity based on 950 observations. We show that the photometry reaches a precision of ∼ 4 mmag for the brightest unsaturated stars in lightcurves spanning almost 3 years. Optical (SDSS griz) and near-infrared (UKIRT ZY JHK) photometry is used to classify the target sample of 4600 M dwarfs with J magnitudes in the range 11-17. Most have spectral-types in the range M0-M2. We conduct Monte Carlo transit injection and detection simulations for short period (<10 day) Jupiterand Neptune-sized planets to characterize the sensitivity of the survey. We investigate the recovery rate as a function of period and magnitude for 4 hypothetical star-planet cases: M0-2+Jupiter, M2-4+Jupiter, M0-2+Neptune, M2-4+Neptune. We find that the WTS lightcurves are very sensitive to the presence of Jupiter-sized short-period transiting planets around M dwarfs. Hot Neptunes produce a much weaker signal and suffer a correspondingly smaller recovery fraction. Neptunes can only be reliably recovered with the correct period around the rather small sample (∼ 100) of the latest M dwarfs (M4-M9) in the WTS. The non-detection of a hot-Jupiter around an M dwarf by the WFCAM Transit Survey allows us to place an upper limit of 1.7-2.0 per cent (at 95 per cent confidence) on the planet occurrence rate.

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Section: Detected Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

A sensitivity analysis of the WFCAM Transit Survey for short-period giant planets around M dwarfs

Kovács

Hodgkin

Sipőcz

et al. 2013

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…This model involves five parameters: the period -P , phase -Tc, and width of the transit -w, and the flux levels in-transit and ex-transit. The MCMC procedure we chose to use was the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm (Dzigan & Zucker 2011).…”

Section: Directed Follow-upmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to Gaia's low cadence, and relatively small number of observations per star, in most realistic cases we expect to obtain posterior distributions that will exhibit several possible periods (Dzigan & Zucker 2011). This will result in the other two more probable scenarios:…”

Section: Dfu For Gaiamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Directed follow-up strategy of low-cadence photometric surveys in search of transiting exoplanets – II. Application to Gaia

Dzigan¹,

Zucker²

2012

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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In a previous paper we presented the Directed Follow-Up (DFU) approach, which we suggested can be used to efficiently augment low-cadence photometric surveys in a way that will optimize the chances to detect transiting exoplanets. In this paper we present preliminary tests of applying the DFU approach to the future ESA space mission Gaia. We demonstrate the strategy application to Gaia photometry through a few simulated cases of known transiting planets, using Gaia expected performance and current design. We show that despite the low cadence observations DFU, when tailored for Gaia's scanning law, can facilitate detection of transiting planets with ground-based observations, even during the lifetime of the mission. We conclude that Gaia photometry, although not optimized for transit detection, should not be ignored in the search of transiting planets. With a suitable ground-based follow-up network it can make an important contribution to this search.

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“…Within Gaia, Tingley (2011) and Dzigan & Zucker (2011) are preparing two different methods to detect such planetary signals. Dzigan & Zucker, using a Bayesian approach, showed that "5 points in a transit deeper than 0.002" means an almost certain detection.…”

Section: Exoplanetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Gaia and LSST on Binaries and Exoplanets

et al. 2011

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Abstract.Two upcoming large scale surveys, the ESA Gaia and LSST projects, will bring a new era in astronomy. The number of binary systems that will be observed and detected by these projects is enormous, estimations range from millions for Gaia to several tens of millions for LSST. We review some tools that should be developed and also what can be gained from these missions on the subject of binaries and exoplanets from the astrometry, photometry, radial velocity and their alert systems.

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Directed follow-up strategy of low-cadence photometric surveys in search of transiting exoplanets - I. Bayesian approach for adaptive scheduling

Cited by 34 publications

References 20 publications

A sensitivity analysis of the WFCAM Transit Survey for short-period giant planets around M dwarfs

A sensitivity analysis of the WFCAM Transit Survey for short-period giant planets around M dwarfs

Directed follow-up strategy of low-cadence photometric surveys in search of transiting exoplanets – II. Application to Gaia

The Impact of Gaia and LSST on Binaries and Exoplanets

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