Planetary transit candidates in the CoRoT LRa01 field

TL;DR

This paper reports the identification and follow-up of planetary transit candidates from the CoRoT LRa01 field, resulting in the discovery of five exoplanets including the first terrestrial transiting planet, CoRoT-7b.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive analysis of CoRoT LRa01 data, identifying 51 candidates and confirming five planets, including the first terrestrial transiting planet, advancing exoplanet detection methods.

Findings

Five planets discovered, including the first terrestrial transiting planet.

73% of candidates are high-quality based on photometry.

Follow-up confirmed 22 cases, with 5 planets confirmed.

Abstract

Context: CoRoT is a pioneering space mission whose primary goals are stellar seismology and extrasolar planets search. Its surveys of large stellar fields generate numerous planetary candidates whose lightcurves have transit-like features. An extensive analytical and observational follow-up effort is undertaken to classify these candidates. Aims: The list of planetary transit candidates from the CoRoT LRa01 star field in the Monoceros constellation towards the Galactic anti-center is presented. The CoRoT observations of LRa01 lasted from 24 October 2007 to 3 March 2008. Methods: 7470 chromatic and 3938 monochromatic lightcurves were acquired and analysed. Instrumental noise and stellar variability were treated with several filtering tools by different teams from the CoRoT community. Different transit search algorithms were applied to the lightcurves. Results: Fifty-one stars were classified as planetary transit candidates in LRa01. Thirty-seven (i.e., 73 % of all candidates) are "good" planetary candidates based on photometric analysis only. Thirty-two (i.e., 87 % of the "good" candidates) have been followed-up. At the time of this writing twenty-two cases have been solved and five planets have been discovered: three transiting hot-Jupiters (CoRoT-5b, CoRoT-12b, and CoRoT-21b), the first terrestrial transiting planet (CoRoT-7b), and another planet in the same system (CoRoT-7c, detected by radial velocity survey only). Evidences of another non-transiting planet in the CoRoT-7 system, namely CoRoT-7d, have been recently found.