Prospects of long-time-series observations from Dome C for transit search

The detection of transiting extrasolar planets requires high-photometric quality and longduration photometric stellar time-series. In this paper, we investigate the advantages provided by the Antarctic observing platform Dome C for planet transit detections during its long winter period, which allow...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Heike Rauer, Thomas Fruth, Anders Erikson
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.247.3433
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.2741v1.pdf
Description
Summary:The detection of transiting extrasolar planets requires high-photometric quality and longduration photometric stellar time-series. In this paper, we investigate the advantages provided by the Antarctic observing platform Dome C for planet transit detections during its long winter period, which allows for relatively long, uninterrupted time-series. Our calculations include limiting effects due to the Sun and Moon, cloud coverage and the effect of reduced photometric quality for high extinction of target fields. We compare the potential for long time-series from Dome C with a single site in Chile, a three-site low-latitude network as well as combinations of Dome C with Chile and the network, respectively. Dome C is one of the prime astronomical sites on Earth for obtaining uninterrupted long-duration observations in terms of prospects for a high observational duty cycle. The duty cycle of a project can, however, be significantly improved by integrating Dome C into a network of sites. 1.