Benchmarking the power of amateur observatories for TTV exoplanets detection

Abstract

We perform an analysis of ~80000 photometric measurements for the following 10 stars hosting transiting planets: WASP-2, -4, -5, -52, Kelt-1, CoRoT-2, XO-2, TrES-1, HD 189733, GJ 436. Our analysis includes mainly transit lightcurves from the Exoplanet Transit Database, public photometry from the literature, and some proprietary photometry privately supplied by other authors. Half of these lightcurves were obtained by amateurs. From this photometry we derive 306 transit timing measurements, as well as improved planetary transit parameters. Additionally, for 6 of these 10 stars we present a set of radial velocity measurements obtained from the spectra stored in the HARPS, HARPS-N, and SOPHIE archives using the HARPS-TERRA pipeline. Our analysis of these TTV and RV data did not reveal significant hints of additional orbiting bodies in almost all of the cases. In the WASP-4 case, we found hints of marginally significant TTV signals having amplitude 10-20 sec, although their parameters are model-dependent and uncertain, while radial velocities did not reveal statistically significant Doppler signals.

16 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables; Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• TESS Transit Timing of Hundreds of Hot Jupiters
• Transmission spectroscopy of the inflated exoplanet WASP-52b, and evidence for a bright region on the stellar surface
• Modelling the He I triplet absorption at 10830 Angstroms in the atmospheres of HD 189733 b and GJ 3470 b
• Original Research By Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS): Ephemeris Refinement of Transiting Exoplanets
• Evidence of energy-, recombination-, and photon-limited escape regimes in giant planet H/He atmospheres
• The geometric albedo of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b measured with CHEOPS
• Evidence of Long-Term Period Variations in the Exoplanet Transit Database (ETD)
• First results of the Kourovka Planet Search: discovery of transiting exoplanet candidates in the first three target fields
• Original Research By Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS): Ephemeris Refinement of Transiting Exoplanets II
• The onset of jets in classical novae
• The near-UV transit of HD 189733b with the XMM-Newton Optical Monitor
• Efficient Follow-Up of Exoplanet Transits Using Small Telescopes
• Transit timing variation analysis of the low-mass brown dwarf KELT-1 b