Bibcode
Juvan, I. G.; Lendl, M.; Cubillos, P. E.; Fossati, L.; Tregloan-Reed, J.; Lammer, H.; Guenther, E. W.; Hanslmeier, A.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 610, id.A15, 17 pp.
Advertised on:
2
2018
Journal
Citations
20
Refereed citations
16
Description
Several studies have shown that stellar activity features, such as
occulted and non-occulted starspots, can affect the measurement of
transit parameters biasing studies of transit timing variations and
transmission spectra. We present PyTranSpot, which we designed to model
multiband transit light curves showing starspot anomalies, inferring
both transit and spot parameters. The code follows a pixellation
approach to model the star with its corresponding limb darkening, spots,
and transiting planet on a two dimensional Cartesian coordinate grid. We
combine PyTranSpot with a Markov chain Monte Carlo framework to study
and derive exoplanet transmission spectra, which provides statistically
robust values for the physical properties and uncertainties of a
transiting star-planet system. We validate PyTranSpot's performance by
analyzing eleven synthetic light curves of four different star-planet
systems and 20 transit light curves of the well-studied WASP-41b system.
We also investigate the impact of starspots on transit parameters and
derive wavelength dependent transit depth values for WASP-41b covering a
range of 6200-9200 Å, indicating a flat transmission spectrum.