A Multi-Year Search For Transits Of Proxima Centauri. I: Light Curves Corresponding To Published Ephemerides
David L. Blank, Dax Feliz, Karen A. Collins, Graeme L. White, Keivan, G. Stassun, Ivan A. Curtis, Rhodes Hart, John F. Kielkopf, Peter Nelson,, Howard Relles, Christopher Stockdale, Bandupriya Jayawardene, Carlton R., Pennypacker, Paul Shankland, Daniel E. Reichart

TL;DR
This study conducted an extensive multi-year photometric monitoring of Proxima Centauri to search for transits of its planet, but found no conclusive evidence of transits despite confirming the star's intrinsic variability.
Contribution
It provides the first comprehensive, multi-year light curve dataset for Proxima Centauri, enabling a more thorough search for transits and analysis of stellar variability.
Findings
No independent verification of previous tentative transit claims.
Confirmed complex and ubiquitous stellar variability.
Data set spans 2006-2017 with 329 observations.
Abstract
Proxima Centauri has become the subject of intense study since the radial-velocity discovery by Anglada-Escud\'e et al. 2016 of a planet orbiting this nearby M-dwarf every ~ 11.2 days. If Proxima Centauri b transits its host star, independent confirmation of its existence is possible, and its mass and radius can be measured in units of the stellar host mass and radius. To date, there have been three independent claims of possible transit-like event detections in light curve observations obtained by the MOST satellite (in 2014-15), the BSST telescope in Antarctica (in 2016), and the Las Campanas Observatory (in 2016). The claimed possible detections are tentative, due in part to the variability intrinsic to the host star, and in the case of the ground-based observations, also due to the limited duration of the light curve observations. Here, we present preliminary results from an…
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