The Effects of Dynamically-Driven Shapes of Extrasolar Giant Planets on Transit Lightcurves

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Several processes can cause the shape of an extrasolar giant planet's shadow, as viewed in transit, to depart from circular. In addition to rotational effects, cloud formation, non-homogenous haze production and movement, and dynamical effects (winds) could also be important. When such a planet transits its host star as seen from Earth, the asphericity will introduce a deviation in the transit lightcurve relative to the transit of a perfectly spherical (or perfectly oblate) planet. We develop a theoretical framework to interpret planet shapes. We then generate predictions for transiting planet shapes based on published theoretical dynamical models of HD209458b and HD189733b. Using these shape models we show that planet shapes are unlikely to introduce detectable lightcurve deviations (those > 10^-5 of the host star), but that the shapes may lead to astrophysical sources of systematic error when measuring planetary oblateness, transit time, and impact parameter.

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