Bibcode
DOI
Tingley, Brandon; Sackett, Penny D.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 627, Issue 2, pp. 1011-1018.
Advertised on:
7
2005
Journal
Citations
76
Refereed citations
60
Description
One of the obstacles in the search for exoplanets via transits is the
large number of candidates that must be followed up, few of which
ultimately prove to be exoplanets. Any method that could make this
process more efficient by somehow identifying the best candidates and
eliminating the worst would therefore be very useful. Seager &
Mallén-Ornelas demonstrated that it was possible to discern
between blends and exoplanets using only the photometric characteristics
of the transits. However, these techniques are critically dependent on
the shape of the transit, characterization of which requires very high
precision photometry of a sort that is atypical for candidates
identified from transit searches. We present a method relying only on
transit duration, depth, and period, which require much less precise
photometry to determine accurately. The numerical tool we derive, the
exoplanet diagnostic η, is intended to identify the subset of
candidates from a transit search that is most likely to contain
exoplanets and is thus most worthy of subsequent follow-up studies. The
effectiveness of the diagnostic is demonstrated with its success in
separating modeled exoplanetary transits and interlopers and by applying
it to actual OGLE transit candidates.