[Aavso-photometry] exoplanet observing

[btieman at mchsi.com]

Jay,

I've bagged 9 exoplanet transits so far this year :)  Some good resources would be:

http://var2.astro.cz/ETD/index.php
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/variables
Google: Bruce Gary

There are some recent threads on the cloudy nights variable star observing forum that provide a lot of info.  Goggle Bruce Gary and you'll find tons of links.  Bruce runs AXA (ameture exoplanet archive) and has written a very good book on measuring transits that he's posted for free on his website.

I find ETD (exoplanet transit archive) indispensible!  It lists all know transiting exoplanets, archives transits submitted by people and found in the literature, lists transit predictions for the next few weeks, and will even model fit your light curve.  So far I've reported 9 transits of my own to TRESCA (the underlying database for ETD--look for Tieman B.) and there are over 750 archived light curves.

I took the coordinates of the transiting planets from ETD and created a The SkyX database for them so I can easily find the target I want and have The Sky X move my scope there for me :)

I find measuring exoplanet transit light curves something that can be done even with a full moon and terrible seeing so it gives my scope something to do when I can't image.  Wasp-3 is my toughest catch so far--a dip of 14mmag.

This is a rough time of year in the Northern hemisphere.  It's not dark enough long enough to catch a lot of transits.  You will generally want 1 hour of data before and after the transit for reference and many transits are 2 hours+.   

Tres-3 might be a good target to start with.  It has a short transit (~75min) and is deep (29mmag).  I've caught it 4 times now and can get a pretty good match to it's predicted orbit just from my data.  TRESCA currently has 65 light curve entries--starting to be enough to look for statistical anomolies!

Anyway, sorry this was so long--I've been waiting since 2002 when the first ameture transit measurement was announced to be able to do this.  This year I finally made it!  Now I can't wait for the weather to clear and the night to start lengthening so I can measure some more...

Brian


-------------- Original message from J McCullough <jimmcc2000 at yahoo.com>: -------------- 


> Any one interested in observing exoplanets? 
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