The Tierras Observatory: Ultra-Precise Photometry for Characterizing Exoplanets and Their Host Stars

Abstract

The Tierras Observatory is a fully robotic 1.3-m telescope at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona. Tierras achieves sub-part-per-thousand (ppt) photometric precision on two timescales: intra-night, to detect and characterize transits of planets around nearby mid-to-late M dwarfs, and night-to-night across an observing season, to characterize the long-term variability of their host stars. We describe the facility and instrument design, our photometric pipeline, and our on-sky performance. We present the first ground-based light curves with sub-ppt precision over timescales of months. This precision enables a range of exoplanet-related science, including the measurement of host star rotation periods, the detection of long-period transits, and the discovery of additional terrestrial planets in known M dwarf systems.

arXiv comment27 pages, 15 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to PASP