Detection of Habitable-Sized Planets: A Progress Report

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Planets forming around close binary systems should form in the binary orbital plane (varying precession periods of protoplanetary material should provide strong collisional damping; Schneider and Doyle 1995). Planets around eclipsing binaries may then be expected to have formed in the binary orbital plane and thus to be detected by their transits across the line of sight. It has been demonstrated that 1-meter ground based observations of the smallest eclipsing binaries could detect such transits with reasonably precise ground-based photometry using a matched filter analysis (cross-correlating all possible transit signatures with the light curves derived from aperture photometry on CCD images; Jenkins, Doyle, and Cullers 1996). Incidentally, precise (GPS) timing of the eclipses of the binaries themselves will provide sufficient precision to allow the detection of any gas giant planets around dozens of small mass systems; the drift in timing being produced by the offset of the binary barycenter by the gas giant planet). The TEP (transit of extrasolar planets) observing network has now completed over 1000 hours of observations on the CM Draconis system with a consequent dozen candidate (i.e. terrestrial sized planet) transit events that are in the process of being verified. This system also shows a drift in eclipse minima epoch indicative of a possible larger, gas giant planetary third body also awaiting confirmation. Finally, 11 additional small-mass eclipsing binary systems have been added to our program beginning this year at U.C. Lick Observatory. We hope to begin to be able to say something observationally useful about habitable-sized planets around small, close binary systems soon. 1) J. Schneider, L.R. Doyle, 1995, Earth, Moon, Planets 71, 153-173. 2) J.M. Jenkins, L.R. Doyle, D.K. Cullers, 1996, Icarus 119, 244-260. 3) L.R. Doyle, E.T. Dunham, H.-J. Deeg, J.E. Blue, J.M. Jenkins, J. Geophy. Res. Planets 101, 14823-14829.

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