Original Research By Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS): Ephemeris Refinement of Transiting Exoplanets

Abstract

We report follow-up observations of transiting exoplanets that have either large uncertainties (>10 minutes) in their transit times or have not been observed for over three years. A fully robotic ground-based telescope network, observations from citizen astronomers and data from TESS have been used to study eight planets, refining their ephemeris and orbital data. Such follow-up observations are key for ensuring accurate transit times for upcoming ground and space-based telescopes which may seek to characterise the atmospheres of these planets. We find deviations from the expected transit time for all planets, with transits occurring outside the 1 sigma uncertainties for seven planets. Using the newly acquired observations, we subsequently refine their periods and reduce the current predicted ephemeris uncertainties to 0.28 - 4.01 minutes. A significant portion of this work has been completed by students at two high schools in London as part of the Original Research By Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS) programme.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• Science Extraction from TESS Observations of Known Exoplanet Hosts
• Another Shipment of Six Short-Period Giant Planets from TESS
• Evidence of Long-Term Period Variations in the Exoplanet Transit Database (ETD)
• Revisiting the Kepler field with TESS: Improved ephemerides using TESS 2min data
• TESS Timings of 31 Hot Jupiters with Ephemeris Uncertainties
• Original Research By Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS): Ephemeris Refinement of Transiting Exoplanets II
• Original Research By Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS): Ephemeris Refinement of Transiting Exoplanets III
• Simultaneous multicolour transit photometry of hot Jupiters HAT-P-19b, HAT-P-51b, HAT-P-55b, and HAT-P-65b
• A CHEOPS Search for Massive, Long-Period Companions to the Warm Jupiter K2-139 b
• Quantifying the dust in SN 2012aw and iPTF14hls with ORBYTS
• TrES-1 b: A Case Study in Detecting Secular Evolution of Exoplanet Orbits