APOSTLE: Eleven Transit Observations of TrES-3b

Abstract

The Apache Point Survey of Transit Lightcurves of Exoplanets (APOSTLE) observed eleven transits of TrES-3b over two years in order to constrain system parameters and look for transit timing and depth variations. We describe an updated analysis protocol for APOSTLE data, including the reduction pipeline, transit model and Markov Chain Monte Carlo analyzer. Our estimates of the system parameters for TrESb are consistent with previous estimates to within the 2σ confidence level. We improved the errors (by 10--30%) on system parameters like the orbital inclination ($i_{\text{orb}}$), impact parameter (b) and stellar density (ρ${}_{\star }$) compared to previous measurements. The near-grazing nature of the system, and incomplete sampling of some transits, limited our ability to place reliable uncertainties on individual transit depths and hence we do not report strong evidence for variability. Our analysis of the transit timing data show no evidence for transit timing variations and our timing measurements are able to rule out Super-Earth and Gas Giant companions in low order mean motion resonance with TrES-3b.

30 pages, 8 tables, 5 figures (submitted to ApJ, Sep 2012)

References in corpus (9)

• Achieving better than 1 minute accuracy in the Heliocentric and Barycentric Julian Dates
• Efficient identification of exoplanetary transit candidates from SuperWASP light curves
• Theoretical Spectral Models of the Planet HD 209458b with a Thermal Inversion and Water Emission Bands
• Using Stellar Limb-Darkening to Refine the Properties of HD 209458b
• Hubble Space Telescope times-series photometry of the planetary transit of HD189733: no moon, no rings, starspots
• The Transit Light Curve (TLC) Project. I. Four Consecutive Transits of the Exoplanet XO-1b
• Analytic Approximations for Transit Light Curve Observables, Uncertainties, and Covariances
• A transit timing analysis of nine RISE light curves of the exoplanet system TrES-3
• Ground-based K-band detection of thermal emission from the exoplanet TrES-3b