TERMS Photometry of Known Transiting Exoplanets

TL;DR

This paper presents refined orbital parameters and improved transit timing predictions for six known exoplanets through precision photometry and MCMC analysis, aiding future observational scheduling.

Contribution

It provides updated ephemerides and confirms system parameters for six exoplanets, enhancing transit timing accuracy for future studies.

Findings

Improved ephemerides for WASP-4b, WASP-5b, and WASP-6b.

Reduced uncertainties in transit times for WASP-29b.

Confirmed orbital and planetary parameters of all six systems.

Abstract

The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS) conducts radial velocity and photometric monitoring of known exoplanets in order to refine planetary orbits and predictions of possible transit times. This effort is primarily directed towards planets not known to transit, but a small sample of our targets consist of known transiting systems. Here we present precision photometry for 6 WASP planets acquired during their transit windows. We perform a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis for each planet and combine these data with previous measurements to redetermine the period and ephemerides for these planets. These observations provide recent mid-transit times which are useful for scheduling future observations. Our results improve the ephemerides of WASP-4b, WASP-5b and WASP-6b and reduce the uncertainties on the mid-transit time for WASP-29b. We also confirm the orbital, stellar and planetary parameters of all 6 systems.