14 New Light Curves and an Updated Ephemeris for the Hot Jupiter HAT-P-54 b

TL;DR

This paper presents 14 new light curves and an updated ephemeris for the hot Jupiter HAT-P-54 b, demonstrating that amateur astronomers can significantly contribute to exoplanet transit timing precision.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive set of light curves for HAT-P-54 b and shows how citizen science can effectively refine exoplanet orbital parameters.

Findings

Updated orbital period with high precision

Reduced mid-transit time uncertainty by over 70%

Confirmed the value of amateur observations in exoplanet studies

Abstract

Here we present an analysis of 14 transit light curves of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-54 b. Thirteen of our datasets were obtained with the 6-inch MicroObservatory telescope, Cecilia, and one was measured with the 61-inch Kuiper Telescope. We used the EXOplanet Transit Interpretation Code (EXOTIC) to reduce 49 datasets in order to update the planet's ephemeris to a mid-transit time of 2460216.95257 +/- 0.00022 BJD_TBD and an updated orbital period of 3.79985363 +/- 0.00000037 days. These results improve the mid-transit uncertainty by 70.27% from the most recent ephemeris update. The updated mid-transit time can help to ensure the efficient use of expensive, large ground- and space-based telescope missions in the future. This result demonstrates that amateur astronomers and citizen scientists can provide meaningful, cost-efficient, crowd-sourcing observations using ground-based telescopes to further refine current mid-transit times and orbital periods.