KPS-1b: the first transiting exoplanet discovered using an amateur astronomer's wide-field CCD data

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of the first transiting exoplanet, KPS-1b, identified using amateur astronomers' wide-field CCD data, demonstrating significant contributions of amateur observations to exoplanet research.

Contribution

It introduces a successful method for amateur astronomers to discover transiting exoplanets using accessible equipment, expanding the scope of exoplanet detection.

Findings

Discovery of KPS-1b, a hot Jupiter exoplanet.

Validation through spectroscopic and high-precision photometry.

Demonstration of amateur astronomers' valuable role in exoplanet discovery.

Abstract

We report the discovery of the transiting hot Jupiter KPS-1b. This exoplanet orbits a V=13.0 K1-type main-sequence star every 1.7 days, has a mass of $1.090_{-0.087}^{+0.086}$ $M_{\mathrm{Jup}}$ and a radius of $1.03_{-0.12}^{+0.13}$ $R_{\mathrm{Jup}}$. The discovery was made by the prototype Kourovka Planet Search (KPS) project, which used wide-field CCD data gathered by an amateur astronomer using readily available and relatively affordable equipment. Here we describe the equipment and observing technique used for the discovery of KPS-1b, its characterization with spectroscopic observations by the SOPHIE spectrograph and with high-precision photometry obtained with 1-m class telescopes. We also outline the KPS project evolution into the Galactic Plane eXoplanet survey (GPX). The discovery of KPS-1b represents a new major step of the contribution of amateur astronomers to the burgeoning field of exoplanetology.