English

Catwoman: A transit modelling Python package for asymmetric light curves

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2021-07-01 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

When exoplanets pass in front of their stars, they imprint a transit signature on the stellar light curve which to date has been assumed to be symmetric in time, owing to the planet being modelled as a circular area occulting the stellar surface. However, this signature might be asymmetric due to different temperature/pressure and/or chemical compositions in the different terminator regions of the transiting planet. catwoman is a Python package that allows to model these asymmetric transit lightcurves, calculating lightcurves for any radially symmetric stellar limb darkening law, and where planets are modelled as two semi-circles, of different radii, using the integration algorithm developed in arXiv:1507.08285 and implemented in the batman library, from which catwoman builds upon.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2106.15643,
  title  = {Catwoman: A transit modelling Python package for asymmetric light curves},
  author = {Kathryn Jones and Néstor Espinoza},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.15643},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

3 pages, 1 figure. Published in JOSS

R2 v1 2026-06-24T03:44:05.967Z