bRing: An observatory dedicated to monitoring the $\beta$ Pictoris b Hill sphere transit

Abstract

Aims. We describe the design and first light observations from the $\beta$ Pictoris b Ring ("bRing") project. The primary goal is to detect photometric variability from the young star $\beta$ Pictoris due to circumplanetary material surrounding the directly imaged young extrasolar gas giant planet \bpb. Methods. Over a nine month period centred on September 2017, the Hill sphere of the planet will cross in front of the star, providing a unique opportunity to directly probe the circumplanetary environment of a directly imaged planet through photometric and spectroscopic variations. We have built and installed the first of two bRing monitoring stations (one in South Africa and the other in Australia) that will measure the flux of $\beta$ Pictoris, with a photometric precision of $0.5\%$ over 5 minutes. Each station uses two wide field cameras to cover the declination of the star at all elevations. Detection of photometric fluctuations will trigger spectroscopic observations with large aperture telescopes in order to determine the gas and dust composition in a system at the end of the planet-forming era. Results. The first three months of operation demonstrate that bRing can obtain better than 0.5\% photometry on $\beta$ Pictoris in five minutes and is sensitive to nightly trends enabling the detection of any transiting material within the Hill sphere of the exoplanet.

References in corpus (18)

• Contributions to the Nearby Stars (NStars) Project: Spectroscopy of Stars Earlier than M0 within 40 parsecs: The Southern Sample
• The fast spin-rotation of a young extrasolar planet
• On the age of the $\beta$ Pictoris moving group
• A fast hybrid algorithm for exoplanetary transit searches
• HST/ACS Multiband Coronagraphic Imaging of the Debris Disk around Beta Pictoris
• Formation, Habitability, and Detection of Extrasolar Moons
• Modeling giant extrasolar ring systems in eclipse and the case of J1407b: sculpting by exomoons?
• The Orbit and Transit Prospects for $\beta$ Pictoris b constrained with One Milliarcsecond Astrometry
• Evidence for the disintegration of KIC 12557548 b
• The Inner Disk Structure, Disk-Planet Interactions, and Temporal Evolution in the Beta Pictoris System: A Two-Epoch HST/STIS Coronagraphic Study
• The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: The Orbit of the Young Exoplanet beta Pictoris b
• Mass and period limits on the ringed companion transiting the young star J1407
• Conditions for water ice lines and Mars-mass exomoons around accreting super-Jovian planets at 1 - 20 AU from Sun-like stars
• The formation of the Galilean moons and Titan in the Grand Tack scenario
• V409 Tau As Another AA Tau: Photometric Observations of Stellar Occultations by the Circumstellar Disk
• First Detection of Hydrogen in the β Pictoris Gas Disk
• Periodic Eclipses of the Young Star PDS 110 Discovered with WASP and KELT Photometry
• Is Beta Pic b the transiting planet of November 1981?

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Transiting exocomets detected in broadband light by TESS in the $\beta$ Pictoris system
• The Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey: Dynamical Mass of the Exoplanet beta Pictoris b from Combined Direct Imaging and Astrometry
• Revisiting the pulsational characteristics of the exoplanet host star $\beta$ Pictoris
• The $\delta$ Scuti pulsations of $\beta$ Pictoris as observed by ASTEP from Antarctica
• The $\beta$ Pictoris b Hill sphere transit campaign. Paper I: Photometric limits to dust and rings
• Short life and abrupt death of PicSat, a small 3U CubeSat dreaming of exoplanet detection
• The surface composition of six newly discovered chemically peculiar stars. Comparison to the HgMn stars $\mu$ Lep and $\beta$ Scl and the superficially normal B star $\nu$ Cap
• Bright Southern Variable Stars in the bRing Survey
• The $\beta$ Pictoris b Hill sphere transit campaign. Paper II: Searching for the signatures of the $\beta$ Pictoris exoplanets through time delay analysis of the $\delta$ Scuti pulsations