A search for transiting planets in the β Pictoris system

Status Report From: arXiv.org e-Print archive
Posted: Wednesday, May 16, 2018

M. Mol Lous (1), E. Weenk (1), M.A. Kenworthy (1), K. Zwintz (2), R. Kuschnig (3) ((1) Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands (2) Institut fur Astro- und Teilchenphysik, Universitat Innsbruck, Austria, (3) Graz University of Technology, Institute of Communication Networks and Satellite Communications, Austria)
(Submitted on 14 May 2018)

The bright (V=3.86) star $\beta$ Pictoris is a nearby young star with a debris disk and gas giant exoplanet, β Pictoris b, in a multi-decade orbit around it. Both the planet's orbit and disk are almost edge-on to our line of sight. We carry out a search for any transiting planets in the β Pictoris system with orbits of less than 30 days that are coplanar with the planet β Pictoris b. We search for a planetary transit using data from the BRITE-Constellation nanosatellite BRITE-Heweliusz, analyzing the photometry using the Box-Fitting Least Squares Algorithm (BLS). The sensitivity of the method is verified by injection of artificial planetary transit signals using the Bad-Ass Transit Model cAlculatioN (BATMAN) code. No planet was found in the BRITE-Constellation data set. We rule out planets larger than 0.6 RJ for periods of less than 5 days, larger than 0.75 $\mathrm{R_J}$ for periods of less than 10 days, and larger than 1.05 RJ for periods of less than 20 days.

Comments:    6 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
DOI:    10.1051/0004-6361/201731941
Cite as:    arXiv:1805.05240 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1805.05240v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Matthew A. Kenworthy
[v1] Mon, 14 May 2018 15:43:47 GMT (1691kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05240

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