[Aavso-photometry] extrasolar planet photometry

[Tonny Vanmunster]

Hi Michael and others,

You're raising an interesting discussion (which might apply to other
photometry projects as well). I agree with you that in general there's no
"science" in doing amateur photometry of already discovered and well-studied
exoplanets.

However, things become entirely different in case we focus on poorly studied
objects. There's a whole range of exoplanets belonging to this category.
Just take a look at www.transitsearch.org and study the "candidates" list in
detail (especially the 'Results' column). Amateur astronomers definitely can
contribute to the 'scientific' study of exoplanets that still have highly
unknown planetary properties, through photometric observations.

I think TrES-1 is a nice example of the scientific value amateurs can
deliver. The TrES-1 discovery paper by Alonso, released on Aug 24 2004,
lists initial planetary properties for TrES-1, derived from spectroscopic
and photometric observations. My photometry of TrES-1 on the nights of Sep
01/02 2004 and Sep 04/05 2004, combined with recent spectroscopic
observations by a team of professional astronomers, meanwhile has allowed
professionals to significantly improve the planetary radius of TrES-1.
Starting from these improved physical properties of TrES-1 and its parent
star, we were able to compute evolutionary models for the planet, which in
turn allowed us to verify that the code used for the calculation of the
models also is applicable to other recently discovered transiting planets.
This in turn, allowed to identify 1 exoplanet that does not fit with our
theoretical model, triggering a discussion on possible explanations. And so
on. I can not go into further details on the above yet, as I'm co-authoring
a paper on these results with professional astronomers, scheduled for
publication in a scientific astronomy journal in just a week or two.

Apart from the above, I have no problem - being an amateur - to participate
every now and then in non-scientific projects as well (for instance, to
challenge my photometric skills), simply for "fun". After all, things might
become pretty boring if we would concentrate on "scientific" projects only.

Best regards,
Tonny

Tonny Vanmunster
CBA Belgium Observatory
http://www.cbabelgium.com
________________________________________________________
PERANSO : The Final Frontier of Period Analysis Software
http://www.peranso.com
________________________________________________________


-----Original Message-----
From: aavso-photometry-bounces at mira.aavso.org
[mailto:aavso-photometry-bounces at mira.aavso.org]On Behalf Of Michael
Koppelman
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 7:17 PM
To: aavso-photometry at aavso.org
Subject: [Aavso-photometry] extrasolar planet photometry


I'm wondering where the science is in this extrasolar planet photometry
stuff. Are we interested in times of minima? Times of ingress and
egress? Is it just a photometric challenge to test our skills? Are we
looking for period changes, color changes, etc?

I'm just curious what our data will be used for in regards to the study
of these sorts of (already discovered) planets.

Cheers,
Michael Koppelman
http://www.lolife.com/astronomy/

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