The Transit Light Curve Project. XI. Submillimagnitude Photometry of Two Transits of the Bloated Planet WASP-4b

Abstract

We present photometry of two transits of the giant planet WASP-4b with a photometric precision of 400-800 parts per million and a time sampling of 25-40 seconds. The two midtransit times are determined to within 6 seconds. Together with previously published times, the data are consistent with a constant orbital period, giving no compelling evidence for period variations that would be produced by a satellite or additional planets. Analysis of the new photometry, in combination with stellar-evolutionary modeling, gives a planetary mass and radius of 1.237 +/- 0.064 M_jup and 1.365 +/- 0.021 R_jup. The planet is 15% larger than expected based on previously published models of solar-composition giant planets. With data of the quality presented here, the detection of transits of a "super-Earth" of radius 1.75 R_earth would have been possible.

To appear in AJ [18 pages]

References in corpus (14)

• DHP Framework: Digital Health Passports Using Blockchain -- Use case on international tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Improved parameters for extrasolar transiting planets
• Tidal Evolution of Close-in Extra-Solar Planets
• Homogeneous studies of transiting extrasolar planets. I. Light curve analyses
• Improving Stellar and Planetary Parameters of Transiting Planet Systems: The Case of TrES-2
• The Transit Light Curve Project. IX. Evidence for a Smaller Radius of the Exoplanet XO-3b
• The Transit Light Curve (TLC) Project. I. Four Consecutive Transits of the Exoplanet XO-1b
• Heat transport in giant (exo)planets: a new perspective
• The Transit Light Curve Project. V. System Parameters and Stellar Rotation Period of HD 189733
• Analytic Approximations for Transit Light Curve Observables, Uncertainties, and Covariances
• WASP-4b: a 12th-magnitude transiting hot-Jupiter in the Southern hemisphere
• Properties of analytic transit light curve models
• The composition of transiting giant extrasolar planets
• Theoretical Radii of Extrasolar Giant Planets: the Cases of TrES-4, XO-3b, and HAT-P-1b

Cited by in corpus (17)

• TESS Transit Timing of Hundreds of Hot Jupiters
• Tidal Dissipation and Obliquity Evolution in Hot Jupiter Systems
• Benchmarking the power of amateur observatories for TTV exoplanets detection
• Coupled Evolution with Tides of the Radius and Orbit of Transiting Giant Planets: General Results
• WASP-4b Arrived Early for the TESS Mission
• Atmospheric Characterization of 5 Hot Jupiters with Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope
• HAT-P-65b and HAT-P-66b: Two Transiting Inflated Hot Jupiters and Observational Evidence for the Re-Inflation of Close-In Giant Planets
• A lower radius and mass for the transiting extrasolar planet HAT-P-8b
• ExoClock project II: A large-scale integrated study with 180 updated exoplanet ephemerides
• How to determine an exomoon's sense of orbital motion
• Gemini/GMOS Transmission Spectral Survey: Complete Optical Transmission Spectrum of the hot Jupiter WASP-4b
• Physical properties of the WASP-44 planetary system from simultaneous multi-colour photometry
• ACCESS: Ground-based Optical Transmission Spectroscopy of the Hot Jupiter WASP-4b
• MCMCI: A code to fully characterise an exoplanetary system
• Beating stellar systematic error floors using transit-based densities
• Searching for Candidates of Orbital Decays among Transit Exoplanets
• Characterizing the WASP-4 system with TESS and radial velocity data: Constraints on the cause of the hot Jupiter's changing orbit and evidence of an outer planet