English

Analytic approximations for transit light curve observables and uncertainties

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often useful to have analytic approximations for the parameters as well as their uncertainties and covariances. Here we give such formulas, for the case of an exoplanet transiting a star with a uniform brightness distribution. When limb darkening is significant, our parameter sets are still useful, although our analytic formulas underpredict the covariances and uncertainties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0808.0176,
  title  = {Analytic approximations for transit light curve observables and uncertainties},
  author = {Joshua A. Carter and Jennifer C. Yee and Jason Eastman and B. Scott Gaudi and Joshua N. Winn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.0176},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

2 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:06:51.634Z