Outcome of Six Candidate Transiting Planets from a TrES Field in Andromeda

Abstract

Driven by the incomplete understanding of the formation of gas giant extrasolar planets and of their mass-radius relationship, several ground-based, wide-field photometric campaigns are searching the skies for new transiting extrasolar gas giants. As part of the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES), in 2003/4 we monitored approximately 30,000 stars (9 .5 < V < 15.5) in a 5.7 degree x 5.7 degree field in Andromeda with three telescopes over five months. We identified six candidate transiting planets from the stellar light curves. From subsequent follow-up observations, we rejected each of these as an astrophysical false positive, i.e. a stellar system containing an eclipsing binary, whose light curve mimics that of a Jupiter-sized planet transiting a sun-like star. We discuss here the procedures followed by the TrES team to reject false positives from our list of candidate transiting hot Jupiters. We present these candidates as early examples of the various types of astrophysical false postives found in the TrES campaign, and discuss what we learned from the analysis.

v1. Submitted to ApJ, 22 July 2006. 14 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables. Updated references, author order and author affiliations. v.2 Substantial changes made to text. Accepted for publication in ApJ. v3. Corrections made to source that do not impact text

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Cited by in corpus (16)

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