A transiting planet among 23 new near-threshold candidates from the OGLE survey - OGLE-TR-182

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and confirmation of a hot Jupiter exoplanet, OGLE-TR-182b, from the OGLE survey data, highlighting the challenges in confirming transiting planets and implications for future missions.

Contribution

It presents the identification and confirmation of a new transiting gas giant from OGLE data, demonstrating the observational efforts needed for such discoveries.

Findings

OGLE-TR-182b is a hot Jupiter with a 3.98-day orbit.

Confirmation required extensive telescope time and advanced instruments.

The study discusses challenges in confirming transiting planets in survey data.

Abstract

By re-processing the data of the second season of the OGLE survey for planetary transits and adding new mesurements on the same fields gathered in subsequent years with the OGLE telescope, we have identified 23 new transit candidates, recorded as OGLE-TR-178 to OGLE-TR-200. We studied the nature of these objects with the FLAMES/UVES multi-fiber spectrograph on the VLT. One of the candidates, OGLE-TR-182, was confirmed as a transiting gas giant planet on a 4-day orbit. We characterised it with further observations using the FORS1 camera and UVES spectrograph on the VLT. OGLE-TR-182b is a typical ``hot Jupiter'' with an orbital period of 3.98 days, a mass of 1.01 +- 0.15 MJup and a radius of 1.13 (+0.24-0.08) RJup. Confirming this transiting planet required a large investment in telescope time with the best instruments available, and we comment on the difficulty of the confirmation process for transiting planets in the OGLE survey. We delienate the zone were confirmation is difficult or impossible, and discuss the implications for the Corot space mission in its quest for transiting telluric planets.