Improvements to existing transit detection algorithms and their comparison

Tingley, B.

doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20031138

Cited by 38 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This points towards a greater robustness of the method used by Team 3. It confirms that the BLS algorithm is more sensitive to faint transits, a result which also shows up in the theoretical comparison performed by Tingley (2003) or in the recent re-analysis of the OGLE data (Udalski et al 2003). The better results of Team 3 could also be due to a more efficient detrending technique.…”

Section: "Blind" Analysissupporting

confidence: 76%

“…The detection stage may benefit from the correction to the BLS algorithm proposed by Tingley (2003). In theory, the corrected BLS should be somewhat more powerful in distinguishing between a transit signal and random noise, thus improving detection ability.…”

Section: Prospects For Further Improvementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A theoretical comparison of these methods was proposed (Tingley 2003), which concluded that "no detector is clearly superior for all transit signal energies", but an optimized BLS algorithm still performs slightly better for shallower transits. Here, we adopt a more empirical approach to make the comparison by using as a testbench a set of synthetic light curves with detailed simulations of the instrumental noise and astrophysical sources of variability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Comparative blind test of five planetary transit detection algorithms on realistic synthetic light curves

Moutou¹,

Pont

Barge³

et al. 2005

A&A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Because photometric surveys of exoplanet transits are very promising sources of future discoveries, many algorithms are being developed to detect transit signals in stellar light curves. This paper compares such algorithms for the next generation of space-based transit detection surveys like CoRoT, Kepler, and Eddington. Five independent analyses of a thousand synthetic light curves are presented. The light curves were produced with an end-to-end instrument simulator and include stellar microvariability and a varied sample of stellar and planetary transits diluted within a much larger set of light curves. The results show that different algorithms perform quite differently, with varying degrees of success in detecting real transits and avoiding false positives. We also find that the detection algorithm alone does not make all the difference, as the way the light curves are filtered and detrended beforehand also has a strong impact on the detection limit and on the false alarm rate. The microvariability of sun-like stars is a limiting factor only in extreme cases, when the fluctuation amplitudes are large and the star is faint. In the majority of cases it does not prevent detection of planetary transits. The most sensitive analysis is performed with periodic box-shaped detection filters. False positives are method-dependent, which should allow reduction of their detection rate in real surveys. Background eclipsing binaries are wrongly identified as planetary transits in most cases, a result which confirms that contamination by background stars is the main limiting factor. With parameters simulating the CoRoT mission, our detection test indicates that the smallest detectable planet radius is on the order of 2 Earth radii for a 10-day orbital period planet around a K0 dwarf.

show abstract

Section: "Blind" Analysissupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Prospects For Further Improvementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Comparative blind test of five planetary transit detection algorithms on realistic synthetic light curves

Moutou¹,

Pont

Barge³

et al. 2005

A&A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…without knowing in advance in which light curves they had been inserted, by means of the LAM transit detection pipeline. The latter foresees the following steps: a) a 5-sigma clipping to filter out outliers due to proton impacts during the passage of the satellite at the South Atlantic Anomaly; b) a high-pass sliding median filter to remove stellar variability; c) a Savitzky-Golay low-pass filter to remove high-frequency variations of instrumental origin; d) an automatic detection and correction of the most evident hot pixels; e) the search for transits by means of the BLS algorithm (Kovàcs, Zucker, & Mazeh 2002) with the directional correction (Tingley 2003). The percentage of detected super-Earths with P < 10 days around stars with 11 < V < 13.5 is 35 %.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of small-size planetary candidates with CoRoT data

Bonomo¹,

Chabaud²,

Deleuil³

et al. 2010

Proc. IAU

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. With the discovery of CoRoT-7b, the first transiting super-Earth, the CoRoT space mission has shown the capability to detect short-period rocky planets around solar-like stars. By performing a blind test with real CoRoT light curves, we want to establish the detection threshold of small-size planets in CoRoT data. We investigate the main obstacles to the detection of transiting super-Earths in CoRoT data, notably the presence of short-time scale variability and hot pixels.

show abstract

“…We once more investigated all light curves that had been removed in the previous steps; however this time we used the dedicated transit finding algorithm "boxfitting" (Kovacs et al 2002) for the period determination. As Tingley (2003) has shown, the boxfitting algorithm is a powerful tool for detection of eclipsing systems. We implemented the original Fortran code 2 into our detection pipeline and ran the algorithm over the mostly noisy light curves that had been removed from the sample as spurious detections in the previous steps.…”

Section: Search For Eclipsing Binariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Wendelstein Calar Alto Pixellensing Project (WeCAPP): the M 31 variable star catalogue

Fliri¹,

Riffeser

Seitz³

et al. 2005

A&A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we present the WeCAPP catalogue of variable stars found in the bulge of M 31. Observations in the WeCAPP microlensing survey (optical R and I bands) for a period of three years (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003) resulted in a database with unprecedented time coverage for an extragalactic variable star study. We detected 23781 variable sources in a 16.1 × 16.6 field centered on the nucleus of M 31. The catalogue of variable stars contains the positions, the periods, and the variation amplitudes in the R and I bands. We classified the variables according to their position in the R-band period-amplitude plane. Three groups can be distinguished; while the first two groups can be mainly associated with Cepheid-like variables (population I Cepheids in group I; type II Cepheids and RV Tauri stars in group II), the third one consists of Long Period Variables (LPVs). We detected 37 RV Tauri stars and 11 RV Tauri candidates, which makes this catalogue one of the largest collections of this class of stars to date. The classification scheme is supported by Fourier decomposition of the light curves. Our data shows a correlation of the low-order Fourier coefficients Φ 21 with Φ 31 for classical Cepheids, as well as for type II Cepheids and RV Tauri stars. Correlating our sample of variable stars with X-ray based catalogues of Kaaret (2002, ApJ, 578, 114) and Kong et al. (2002, ApJ, 577, 738) results in 23 and 31 coincidences, 8 and 12 of which are M 31 globular clusters. The number density of detected variables is clearly not symmetric, which has to be included in the calculations of the expected microlensing event rate towards M 31. This asymmetry is due to the enhanced extinction in the spiral arms superimposed on the bulge of M 31, which reduces the number of sources to about 60%, if compared to areas of equivalent bulge brightness without enhanced extinction present.

show abstract

Improvements to existing transit detection algorithms and their comparison

Cited by 38 publications

References 5 publications

Comparative blind test of five planetary transit detection algorithms on realistic synthetic light curves

Comparative blind test of five planetary transit detection algorithms on realistic synthetic light curves

Detection of small-size planetary candidates with CoRoT data

The Wendelstein Calar Alto Pixellensing Project (WeCAPP): the M 31 variable star catalogue

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About