SETI Public Mailing List: SETI public: Paper - Searching for Transitting Planets in Stellar Systems

>Paper: astro-ph/0504162

>Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 20:01:46 GMT (99kb)

>Title: Searching for Transiting Planets in Stellar Systems

>Authors: J. Pepper (1) and B. S. Gaudi (2) ((1) The Ohio State University, (2)

> Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

>Comments: 24 pages, 10 figures, submitted to ApJ

>\\

> We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits

>by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters,

>and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the

>number of planets that a survey will detect as a function of the parameters of

>the system, the observational setup, site properties, and planet properties. We

>find that the detection probability is generally maximized for I-band

>observations. The signal-to-noise ratio of a planetary transit is weakly

>dependent on the mass of the primary for sources with flux above the sky

>background, and falls very sharply for sources below sky. Therefore the number

>of detectable planets is roughly proportional to the number of stars with

>fluxes above sky (and not necessarily the number of sources with photometric

>error less a given threshold). In order to maximize the number of detections,

>experiments should be tailored such that stars near sky are above the detection

>threshold. Once this requirement is met, the number of detected planets is

>relatively weakly dependent on the detection threshold, diameter of the

>telescope, exposure time, seeing, age of the system, and planet radius. The

>number of detected planets is a strongly decreasing function of the distance to

>the system, implying that the nearest, richest clusters may prove to be optimal

>targets.

>\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504162 , 99kb)

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>\\

>Paper: astro-ph/0502276

>replaced with revised version Thu, 7 Apr 2005 15:32:45 GMT (90kb)

>Title: Neptune Trojans as a Testbed for Planet Formation

>Authors: E. I. Chiang (UC Berkeley Astronomy) and Y. Lithwick (UC Berkeley

> Astronomy)

>Comments: Accepted to ApJ April 6, 2005

>\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0502276 , 90kb)

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