Bibcode
Lecavelier, Alain; Hebrard, Guillaume; Desert, Jean-Michel; Ehrenreich, David; Diaz, Rodrigo; Deeg, Hans; Moutou, Claire; Bouchy, Francois; Vidal-Madjar, Alfred
Bibliographical reference
Spitzer Proposal ID #546
Advertised on:
4
2010
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The detection of the transiting extrasolar planet CoRoT-9b has just been
reported (Deeg et al. 2010). With a semi-major axis of 0.41 astronomical
unit on a quasi-circular orbit, this is the first transiting planet far
enough from its parent star to have an extended Hill sphere (3.5 million
kilometers in radius), as needed to form and sustain rings and
satellites. Here we propose to observe a full transit of CoRoT-9b in
front of its parent star to significantly improve the accuracy on the
transit light curve as provided by the CoRoT satellite and to probe the
nearby environment of the planet. Up to 2014, there will be only two
opportunities to observe a transit of CoRoT-9b with Spitzer: the first
one in June 2010, and the second will not happen before July 2011. Those
rare events should not be missed. Here we propose Director Discretionary
Time observations to observe the transit of June 2010, 17th. The primary
aim of these observations will be the search for rings and satellites.
The Spitzer/IRAC light curve will also allow the search for Transit
Timing Variations (TTV) and Transit Duration Variations (TDV)
potentially due to additional bodies in this planetary system, as well
as a significant refinement of the system parameters, together with the
photometric and spectroscopic ground-based campaign that we will
simultaneously conduct in June 2010.