High Order Harmonics in Light Curves of Kepler Planets
arXiv:1508.00899 · doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slv112
Abstract
The Kepler mission was launched in 2009 and has discovered thousands of planet candidates. In a recent paper, Esteves et al. (2013) found a periodic signal in the light curves of KOI-13 and HAT-P-7, with a frequency triple the orbital frequency of a transiting planet. We found similar harmonics in many systems with a high occurrence rate. At this time, the origins of the signal are not entirely certain. We look carefully at the possibility of errors being introduced through our data processing routines but conclude that the signal is real. The harmonics on multiples of the orbital frequency are a result of non-sinusoidal periodic signals. We speculate on their origin and generally caution that these harmonics could lead to wrong estimates of planet albedos, beaming mass estimates, and ellipsoidal variations.
arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS Letters, 6 pages, 2 figures
References in corpus (8)
- Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
- Photometric detection of non-transiting short-period low-mass companions through the beaming, ellipsoidal and reflection effects in Kepler and CoRoT lightcurves
- Transit Timing Observations from Kepler. VIII Catalog of Transit Timing Measurements of the First Twelve Quarters
- Optical Phase Curves of Kepler Exoplanets
- Atmospheric Characterization of the Hot Jupiter Kepler-13Ab
- Photometrically derived masses and radii of the planet and star in the TrES-2 system
- Multiple planets or exomoons in Kepler hot Jupiter systems with transit timing variations?
- Characterizing the Cool KOIs. V. KOI-256: A Mutually Eclipsing Post-Common Envelope Binary
Cited by in corpus (4)
- The Telltale Heartbeat: Detection and Characterization of Eccentric Orbiting Planets via Tides on their Host Star
- Higher Order Harmonics in the Light Curves of Eccentric Planetary Systems
- Is binning always sinning? The impact of time-averaging for exoplanet phase curves
- Revisiting Kepler Transiting Systems: Unvetting Planets and Constraining Relationships among Harmonics in Phase Curves