Sergio Hoyer

Transit Monitoring in the South (TraMoS) Project: Discarding Transit Timing Variations in WASP-5b

We report nine new transit epochs of the extrasolar planet WASP-5b, observed in the Bessell I band with the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope at the Cerro Pachon Observatory and with the SMARTS 1 m Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, between 2008 August and 2009 October. The new transits have been combined with all previously published transit data for this planet to provide a new Transit Timing Variation (TTV) analysis of its orbit. We find no evidence of TTV rms variations larger than 1 minute over a 3 year time span. This result discards the presence of planets more massive than about 5 M ⊕, 1 M ⊕, and 2 M ⊕ around the 1:2, 5:3, and 2:1 orbital resonances, respectively. These new detection limits exceed by ~5-30 times the limits imposed by current radial velocity observations in the mean motion resonances of this system. Our search for the variation of other parameters, such as orbital inclination and transit depth, also yields negative results over the total time span of the transit observations. This result supports formation theories that predict a paucity of planetary companions to hot Jupiters.

First results from the Calan–Hertfordshire Extrasolar Planet Search: exoplanets and the discovery of an eccentric brown dwarf in the desert

The original article can be found at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com Copyright Royal Astronomical Society

DETECTION OF PERIOD VARIATIONS IN EXTRASOLAR TRANSITING PLANET OGLE-TR-111b

Two consecutive transits of planetary companion OGLE-TR-111b were observed in the I band. Combining these observations with data from the literature, we find that the timing of the transits cannot be explained by a constant period and that the observed variations cannot be originated by the presence of a satellite. However, a perturbing planet with the mass of the Earth in an exterior orbit could explain the observations if the orbit of OGLE-TR-111b is eccentric. We also show that the eccentricity needed to explain the observations is not ruled out by the radial velocity data found in the literature.

FIVE NEW TRANSIT EPOCHS OF THE EXOPLANET OGLE-TR-111b*

We report five new transit epochs of the extrasolar planet OGLE-TR-111b, observed in the v-HIGH and Bessell I bands with the FORS1 and FORS2 at the ESO Very Large Telescope between 2008 April and May. The new transits have been combined with all previously published transit data for this planet to provide a new transit timing variations (TTVs) analysis of its orbit. We find no TTVs with amplitudes larger than 1.5 minutes over a four-year observation time baseline, in agreement with the recent result by Adams et al. Dynamical simulations fully exclude the presence of additional planets in the system with masses greater than 1.3, 0.4, and 0.5 M ⊕ at the 3:2, 1:2, and 2:1 resonances, respectively. We also place an upper limit of about 30 M ⊕ on the mass of potential second planets in the region between the 3:2 and 1:2 mean-motion resonances.

Twenty-one new light curves of OGLE-TR-56b: New system parameters and limits on timing variations

United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA Origins grant NNX07AN63G)

TraMoS project – III. Improved physical parameters, timing analysis and starspot modelling of the WASP-4b exoplanet system from 38 transit observations

We report twelve new transit observations of the exoplanet WASP-4b from the Transit Monitoring in the South Project (TraMoS) project. These transits are combined with all previously published transit data for this planet to provide an improved radius measurement of Rp = 1.395 +- 0.022 Rjup and improved transit ephemerides. In a new homogeneous analysis in search for Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) we find no evidence of those with RMS amplitudes larger than 20 seconds over a 4-year time span. This lack of TTVs rules out the presence of additional planets in the system with masses larger than about 2.5 M_earth, 2.0 M_earth, and 1.0 M_earth around the 1:2, 5:3 and 2:1 orbital resonances. Our search for the variation of other parameters, such as orbital inclination and transit depth also yields negative results over the total time span of the transit observations. Finally we perform a simple study of stellar spots configurations of the system and conclude that the star rotational period is about 34 days.

Exoplanet Surveys at Universidad de Chile

We present and highlight the first results of the three main exoplanet surveys we are currently conducting at Universidad de Chile: CHEPS, Red Giant Exoplanets (radial velocity), and TraMoS (transit lightcurves). We have several interesting candidates at the CalanHertfordshire Extrasolar Planet Search (CHEPS) project, which is aimed at searching for the currently missing southern bright transiting planets at a few m/s radial velocity precision. Using the same technique, we are also characterizing the planetary population in a constrained sample of Red Giant stars. The Transit Monitoring from the South (TraMoS) project is aimed both at improving transit parameters and at detecting any kind of lightcurve variability from several known southern exoplanet systems.