SETI public: Searching for Transiting Planets in Stellar Systems

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: High Orbital Eccentricities of Extrasolar Planets Induced by the Kozai Mechanism"

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0504162
From: Joshua Pepper [view email]
Date (v1): Wed, 6 Apr 2005 20:01:46 GMT (99kb)
Date (revised v2): Fri, 10 Jun 2005 19:08:09 GMT (99kb)

Searching for Transiting Planets in Stellar Systems

Authors: J. Pepper (1), B. S. Gaudi (2) ((1) The Ohio State University, (2)
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
Comments: 24 pages, 10 figures. Minor changes. Accepted to ApJ, to appear in
the September 20, 2005 issue
Journal-ref: Astrophys.J. 631 (2005)

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

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: High Orbital Eccentricities of Extrasolar Planets Induced by the Kozai Mechanism"

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