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Research and development of ground-based transiting extrasolar planet projects
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Bento, Joao Paulo da Silva (2012) Research and development of ground-based transiting extrasolar planet projects. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2612719~S1
Abstract
The search for exoplanets has gone from the realm of speculation to being
one of the most prolific topics of modern astronomy in the space of just 20 years.
In particular, the geometric alignment of transiting exoplanets provides the added
opportunity to measure a host of properties of these systems, including studies of
planetary atmospheres.
The vast majority of known transiting exoplanets to date were found using
dedicated ground-based surveys such as the SuperWASP project. Such enterprises
comprise of multiple small telescopes designed to perform high-precision photometry
over a wide field of view and rely on efficiently compensating for several noise
contributions. An analysis of the sources of noise in the SuperWASP light curves
was performed, focussing on systematic e↵ects fixed in detector space. A study of
a set of detector maps produced from the average of the fractional residuals of the
light curves in CCD coordinates has revealed that the current flat-fielding strategy
is introducing a component of red noise into the light curves due to the wavelengthdependent
nature of the CCDs. The possibility of using such maps as a basis for an
additional decorrelation step in the software pipeline is discussed.
The next phase in planetary discoveries from ground-based surveys consists
of the search for smaller planets and those in longer orbits around their host stars.
This process involves an observing strategy that focuses on intensive coverage of
particular locations of the sky. We develop simulation software to aid the choice of
observed fields for the SuperWASP and Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)
projects in order to maximise the chances of finding planets at those locations.
Moreover, this simulation can be used for comparative studies of the planet finding
probability for several design choices and has been used to justify the necessity to
commission the NGTS instrument at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in order to benefit
from one of the World’s premier sites.
The increasing number of known transiting planets has triggered a new phase
of exoplanet exploration, in which the properties of the atmospheres of these planets
are being explored using techniques such as transmission spectroscopy. This process
consists of measuring an enhanced transit depth at particular wavelengths due to
the presence of opacity sources in the atmospheres of exoplanets. We use the multiband
photometer ULTRACAM to attempt a similar measurement via the technique
of transmission photometry for the highly inflated planets WASP-15b and WASP-
17b. The data are found to be dominated by systematic errors and a detailed study
of the possible sources is performed.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Extrasolar planets -- Detection -- Research | ||||
Official Date: | July 2012 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Physics | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Wheatley, Peter J. | ||||
Extent: | xi, 202 leaves : illustrations, charts. | ||||
Language: | eng |
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