Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems with Transit Timing

Details Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems with Transit Timing Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems with Transit Timing

2007-04-04

arxiv.org/abs/0704.0632v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

7 pages, 2 figures, white paper submitted to the Exoplanet Task Force

Scientific paper

In the coming decades, research in extrasolar planets aims to advance two goals: 1) detecting and characterizing low-mass planets increasingly similar to the Earth, and 2) improving our understanding of planet formation. We present a new planet detection method that is capable of making large advances towards both of these objectives and describe a modest network of telescopes that is able to make the requisite observations. In a system where a known planet transits its host star, a second planet in that system will cause the time between transits to vary. These transit timing variations can be used to infer the orbital elements and mass of the perturbing planet even if it has a mass that is smaller than the mass of the Earth. This detection technique complements other techniques because it is most sensitive in mean-motion resonances where, due to degeneracies, other techniques have reduced sensitivity. Small ground-based observatories have already exceeded the photometric precision necessary to detect sub-Earth mass planets. However, TTV planet searches are currently limited by the relatively small number of high-precision transit data and insufficient observing time on existing telescopes. These issues will be compounded as the number of known transiting planets suitable for TTV study will increase substantially in the near future. A relatively modest investment in a ground-based network of small ($\sim 0.5 {\rm m}$ telescopes could provide the needed coverage and so dramatically increase the effectiveness of transit timing observations.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems with Transit Timing does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems with Transit Timing, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Detecting and Characterizing Planetary Systems with Transit Timing will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-214039