A SEARCH FOR ADDITIONAL PLANETS IN FIVE OF THE EXOPLANETARY SYSTEMS STUDIED BY THE NASA EPOXI MISSION

Journal Article · Sun May 01 04:00:00 EDT 2011 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/732/1/41· OSTI ID:21574640

Ballard, Sarah; Charbonneau, David; Holman, Matthew J ^[1]; Christiansen, Jessie L ^[2]; Deming, Drake; Barry, Richard K; Kuchner, Marc J; Livengood, Timothy A; Hewagama, Tilak ^[3]; A'Hearn, Michael F; Wellnitz, Dennis D; Sunshine, Jessica M ^[4]; Hampton, Don L ^[5]; Lisse, Carey M ^[6]; Seager, Sara ^[7]

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1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
2. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
3. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
4. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (United States)
5. Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775 (United States)
6. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723 (United States)
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)

We present time series photometry and constraints on additional planets in five of the exoplanetary systems studied by the EPOCh (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization) component of the NASA EPOXI mission: HAT-P-4, TrES-3, TrES-2, WASP-3, and HAT-P-7. We conduct a search of the high-precision time series for photometric transits of additional planets. We find no candidate transits with significance higher than our detection limit. From Monte Carlo tests of the time series using putative periods from 0.5 days to 7 days, we demonstrate the sensitivity to detect Neptune-sized companions around TrES-2, sub-Saturn-sized companions in the HAT-P-4, TrES-3, and WASP-3 systems, and Saturn-sized companions around HAT-P-7. We investigate in particular our sensitivity to additional transits in the dynamically favorable 3:2 and 2:1 exterior resonances with the known exoplanets: if we assume coplanar orbits with the known planets, then companions in these resonances with HAT-P-4b, WASP-3b, and HAT-P-7b would be expected to transit, and we can set lower limits on the radii of companions in these systems. In the nearly grazing exoplanetary systems TrES-3 and TrES-2, additional coplanar planets in these resonances are not expected to transit. However, we place lower limits on the radii of companions that would transit if the orbits were misaligned by 2.{sup 0}0 and 1.{sup 0}4 for TrES-3 and TrES-2, respectively.

• OSTI ID: 21574640
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 732; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ECLIPSE
IMAGE PROCESSING
PHOTOMETRY
PLANETS
PROCESSING
SENSITIVITY