Ground-Based Detection of Terrestrial-Sized Extrasolar Planets Around Small Eclipsing Binary Systems

Doyle, L. R.; Deeg, H. J.; Jenkins, J. M.
Bibliographical reference

American Astronomical Society, 197th AAS Meeting, #62.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.1506

Advertised on:
12
2000
Number of authors
3
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We have photometrically searched the circumstellar habitable zone (about 95 eclipsing binary system CM Draconis for evidence of planetary transits. With 1014 hours of imaging data we have reached a detection limit of about 2.3 Earth radii (less than 1 60 days or less, marginally demonstrating that the ground-based detection of large terrestrial-class planets around small main-sequence stars is possible using 1-meter-sized telescopes. We have also found that precise timing of the stellar eclipses themselves is capable of detecting non-coplanar jovian- mass planets with semi-major axes of 1 AU or greater. Two 2.5- Earth-radii terrestrial-sized transit candidate planets remain after applying a matching-correlation filter comparing over 400 million quasi-periodic transit models with the differential light curve. Also, one outer jovian-mass candidate is indicated in the power spectrum of the O-C residuals from about four dozen precise eclipse timings over 6 years. We will discuss our recent extension of these methods to crowded stellar fields where hundreds of eclipsing binary systems may be searched at the same time.