Photometric observation of transiting extrasolar planet WASP - 10b

TL;DR

This paper presents new photometric data for four transits of WASP-10b, refining its system parameters and revealing a larger planetary radius than previously estimated, with improved orbital period and transit duration measurements.

Contribution

The study provides new high-precision photometric observations and updated system parameters for WASP-10b, notably increasing the estimated planetary radius compared to prior estimates.

Findings

Planet radius estimated at 1.22 R_J, larger than previous estimates.

Refined orbital period to 3.092731 days.

Improved transit duration measurement.

Abstract

Wasp-10b is a very interesting transiting extrasolar planet. Although its transit is very deep, about 40 mmag, there are very different estimates of its radius in the literature. We present new photometric observations of four complete transits of this planet. The whole event was detected for each transit and the final light curve consists of more than 1500 individual CCD exposures. We determine the following system parameters: planet to star radius ratio R_p/R_star=0.168 +- 0.001, star radius to semimajor axis ratio R_star/a = 0.094 +- 0.001 and inclination i=87.3 +- 0.1 deg. Assuming that the semimajor axis is 0.036 9 +- ^{0.0012}_{0.0014} AU (Christian et al. 2009), we obtain the following radius of the planet R_p=1.22 +- 0.05 R_J, and radius of the star R_star = 0.75 +- 0.03. The errors include the uncertainty in the stellar mass and the semimajor axis of the planet. Surprisingly, our estimate of the planet radius is significantly higher (by about 12 percent) than the most recent value of Johnson et al. (2009). We also improve the orbital period P_orb=3.092 731 +- 1x10^{-6} days and estimate the average transit duration T_D=0.097 4 +- 8x10^{-4} days.