Affordable echelle spectroscopy of the eccentric HAT-P-2, WASP-14 and XO-3 planetary systems with a sub-meter-class telescope

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that a low-cost, off-the-shelf echelle spectrograph installed on a small 0.6m telescope can effectively measure radial velocities of transiting exoplanets, providing comparable data to larger telescopes.

Contribution

The paper presents the first detailed radial velocity analysis of three planetary systems using a new affordable spectrograph on a small telescope, and compares its performance with larger instruments.

Findings

Achieved radial velocity measurements comparable to larger telescopes.

Validated the spectrograph's suitability for orbital modeling.

Demonstrated cost-effective exoplanet observation capabilities.

Abstract

A new off-shelf low-cost echelle spectrograph was installed recently on the 0.6m telescope at the Star\'a Lesn\'a Observatory (Slovakia). In this paper we describe in details the radial velocity (RV) analysis of the first three transiting planetary systems, HAT-P-2, WASP-14 and XO-3, observed with this instrument. Furthermore, we compare our data with the RV data achieved with echelle spectrographs of other sub-meter-, meter- and two-meter-class telescopes in terms of their precision. Finally, we investigate the applicability of our RV data for modeling orbital parameters.