An analysis of noise in the CoRoT data
Name
701925102-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
2.81 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2f5b265eb99b54ed3d1a76de15412ec4
Author(s)
Sampson, Aaron (Aaron Lee Kasey)
Advisor(s)
Sara Seager.
Alternative Title
Analysis of noise in the COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits data
Date Issued
2010
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
In this thesis, publically available data from the French/ESA satellite mission CoRoT, designed to seek out extrasolar planets, was analyzed using MATLAB. CoRoT attempts to observe the transits of these planets across their parent stars. CoRoT occupies an orbit which periodically carries it through the Van Allen Belts, resulting in a very high level of high outliers in the flux data. Known systematics and outliers were removed from the data and the remaining scatter was evaluated using the median of absolute deviations from the median (MAD), a measure of scatter which is robust to outliers. The level of scatter (evaluated with MAD) present in this data is indicative of the lower limits on the size of planets detectable by CoRoT or a similar satellite. The MAD for CoRoT stars is correlated with the magnitude. The brightest stars observed by CoRoT display scatter of approximately 0.02 percent, while the median value for all stars is 0.16 percent.
Description
Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 57).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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