Hubble Space Telescope search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet Centauri B b
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Seager_Hubble space telescope.pdf
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3.63 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Demory, B.-O.
Ehrenreich, D.
Queloz, D.
Gilliland, R.
Chaplin, W. J.
Proffitt, C.
Gillon, M.
Gunther, M. N.
Benneke, B.
Dumusque, X.
Date Issued
April 2015
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Demory, B.-O., D. Ehrenreich, D. Queloz, et al. “Hubble Space Telescope Search for the Transit of the Earth-Mass Exoplanet Centauri B b.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 450, no. 2, 2015, pp. 2043–2051.
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Author's final manuscript
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv673
