Independent discovery and refined parameters of the transiting exoplanet HAT-P-14b

TL;DR

This paper reports independent discovery and refined parameters of the transiting exoplanet HAT-P-14b, confirming its characteristics and providing additional evidence against false positives, highlighting its suitability for further detailed studies.

Contribution

The study independently confirms the existence of HAT-P-14b and refines its orbital and physical parameters using combined datasets, also analyzing system geometry and potential additional bodies.

Findings

Refined orbital parameters of HAT-P-14b

High impact parameter indicating near-grazing transit

Potential for detecting additional bodies through orbital deviations

Abstract

We present SuperWASP observations of HAT-P-14b, a hot Jupiter discovered by Torres et al. The planet was found independently by the SuperWASP team and named WASP-27b after follow-up observations had secured the discovery, but prior to the publication by Torres et al. Our analysis of HAT-P-14/WASP-27 is in good agreement with the values found by Torres et al. and we refine the parameters by combining our datasets. We also provide additional evidence against astronomical false positives. Due to the brightness of the host star, V = 10, HAT-P-14 is an attractive candidate for further characterisation observations. The planet has a high impact parameter, b = 0.907 +/- 0.004, and the primary transit is close to grazing. This could readily reveal small deviations in the orbital parameters indicating the presence of a third body in the system, which may be causing the small but significant orbital eccentricity, e = 0.095 +/- 0.011. The system geometry suggests that the planet narrowly fails to undergo a secondary eclipse. However, even a non-detection would tightly constrain the system parameters.