Utilizing Small Telescopes Operated by Citizen Scientists for Transiting Exoplanet Follow-up
| Autor: | Stephen R. Kane, Quinn Perian, Kyle A. Pearson, Carl Hergenrother, Michelle Creech-Eakman, Arnaud Malvache, Denise A. Smith, Emmanuel Arbouch, Franck Marchis, A. Biferno, Bob Massey, Robert Baer, Dolores H. Hill, L. R. Cominsky, Mark R. Swain, Scott Dixon, Mike Conley, Robert T. Zellem, Wilfred T. Gee, Michael T. Fitzgerald, David R. Ciardi, Martin Fowler, Marc J. Kuchner, Kalée Tock, Alexandra Iturralde, Brandon Lawton, Rachel Zimmerman-Brachman, Dennis M. Conti, Pat Boyce, Mike Chasin, Mary Dussault, Conley Ball, Laura Peticolas, Sujay Nair, Saneyda Hernandez, Geoffrey Bryden, Gael M. Roudier, Nemanja Jovanovic, Elizabeth Fletcher, Vivek Vijayakumar, Ethan Blaser, Diana Dragomir, Frank Sienkiewicz, John Engelke |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Computer science FOS: Physical sciences Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics Ephemeris 01 natural sciences law.invention Telescope Observatory Planet law 0103 physical sciences Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Transit (astronomy) Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) 010303 astronomy & astrophysics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) James Webb Space Telescope Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Astronomy Astronomy and Astrophysics Exoplanet Space and Planetary Science Terrestrial planet Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics |
| Zdroj: | Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 132:054401 |
| ISSN: | 1538-3873 0004-6280 |
| Popis: | Due to the efforts by numerous ground-based surveys and NASA's Kepler and TESS, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of transiting exoplanets ideal for atmospheric characterization via spectroscopy with large platforms such as JWST and ARIEL. However their next predicted mid-transit time could become so increasingly uncertain over time that significant overhead would be required to ensure the detection of the entire transit. As a result, follow-up observations to characterize these exoplanetary atmospheres would require less-efficient use of an observatory's time---which is an issue for large platforms where minimizing observing overheads is a necessity. Here we demonstrate the power of citizen scientists operating smaller observatories ($\le$1-m) to keep ephemerides "fresh", defined here as when the 1$\sigma$ uncertainty in the mid-transit time is less than half the transit duration. We advocate for the creation of a community-wide effort to perform ephemeris maintenance on transiting exoplanets by citizen scientists. Such observations can be conducted with even a 6-inch telescope, which has the potential to save up to $\sim$10,000~days for a 1000-planet survey. Based on a preliminary analysis of 14 transits from a single 6-inch MicroObservatory telescope, we empirically estimate the ability of small telescopes to benefit the community. Observations with a small-telescope network operated by citizen scientists are capable of resolving stellar blends to within 5''/pixel, can follow-up long period transits in short-baseline TESS fields, monitor epoch-to-epoch stellar variability at a precision 0.67\%$\pm$0.12\% for a 11.3 V-mag star, and search for new planets or constrain the masses of known planets with transit timing variations greater than two minutes. Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures; published in PASP |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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