CONFIRMATION OF HOT JUPITER KEPLER-41b VIA PHASE CURVE ANALYSIS

Journal Article · Sat Apr 20 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/767/2/137· OSTI ID:22126896

Quintana, Elisa V.; Rowe, Jason F.; Caldwell, Douglas A.; Christiansen, Jessie L.; Jenkins, Jon M.; Morris, Robert L.; Smith, Jeffrey C.; Thompson, Susan E. ^[1]; Barclay, Thomas ^[2]; Howell, Steve B.; Borucki, William J.; Sanderfer, Dwight T.; Still, Martin ^[3]; Ciardi, David R. ^[4]; Demory, Brice-Olivier ^[5]; Klaus, Todd C. ^[6]; Fulton, Benjamin J.; Shporer, Avi ^[7]

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1. SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Ave, Suite 100, Mountain View, CA 94043 (United States)
2. Bay Area Environmental Research Institute/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
3. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
4. NASA Exoplanet Science Institute/Caltech, 770 South Wilson Ave., MC 100-2, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
5. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)
6. Orbital Sciences Corporation/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
7. Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, 6740 Cortona Drive, Suite 102, Santa Barbara, CA 93117 (United States)

We present high precision photometry of Kepler-41, a giant planet in a 1.86 day orbit around a G6V star that was recently confirmed through radial velocity measurements. We have developed a new method to confirm giant planets solely from the photometric light curve, and we apply this method herein to Kepler-41 to establish the validity of this technique. We generate a full phase photometric model by including the primary and secondary transits, ellipsoidal variations, Doppler beaming, and reflected/emitted light from the planet. Third light contamination scenarios that can mimic a planetary transit signal are simulated by injecting a full range of dilution values into the model, and we re-fit each diluted light curve model to the light curve. The resulting constraints on the maximum occultation depth and stellar density combined with stellar evolution models rules out stellar blends and provides a measurement of the planet's mass, size, and temperature. We expect about two dozen Kepler giant planets can be confirmed via this method.

• OSTI ID: 22126896
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 767, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCURACY
CONTAMINATION
DENSITY
DILUTION
JUPITER PLANET
PHOTOMETRY
RADIAL VELOCITY
SIMULATION