Demory, Brice-Olivier; Ehrenreich, David; Queloz, Didier; Seager, Sara; Gilliland, Ronald; Chaplin, William J.; Proffitt, Charles; Gillon, Michael; Günther, Maximilian N.; Benneke, Björn; Dumusque, Xavier; Lovis, Christophe; Pepe, Francesco; Ségransan, Damien; Triaud, Amaury; Udry, Stéphane (2015). Hubble Space Telescope search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet α Centauri B b. Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 450(2), pp. 2043-2051. Oxford University Press 10.1093/mnras/stv673
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Results from exoplanet surveys indicate that small planets (super-Earth size and below) are abundant in our Galaxy. However, little is known about their interiors and atmospheres. There is therefore a need to find small planets transiting bright stars, which would enable a detailed characterization of this population of objects. We present the results of a search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet α Centauri B b with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We observed α Centauri B twice in 2013 and 2014 for a total of 40 h. We achieve a precision of 115 ppm per 6-s exposure time in a highly saturated regime, which is found to be consistent across HST orbits. We rule out the transiting nature of α Centauri B b with the orbital parameters published in the literature at 96.6 per cent confidence. We find in our data a single transit-like event that could be associated with another Earth-sized planet in the system, on a longer period orbit. Our programme demonstrates the ability of HST to obtain consistent, high-precision photometry of saturated stars over 26 h of continuous observations.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
10 Strategic Research Centers > Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Demory, Brice-Olivier Denys |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 520 Astronomy |
ISSN: |
0035-8711 |
Publisher: |
Oxford University Press |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Brice-Olivier Denys Demory |
Date Deposited: |
05 Apr 2022 16:15 |
Last Modified: |
02 Mar 2023 23:34 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1093/mnras/stv673 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/153299 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/153299 |
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