This white paper advocates for the creation of a community-wide program to maintain precise mid-transit times of exoplanets that would likely be targeted by future platforms. Given the sheer number of targets that will require careful monitoring between now and the launch of the next generation of exoplanet characterization missions, this network will initially be devised as a citizen science project -- focused on the numerous amateur astronomers, small universities and community colleges and high schools that have access to modest sized telescopes and off-the-shelf CCDs.
@article{arxiv.1903.07716,
title = {Engaging Citizen Scientists to Keep Transit Times Fresh and Ensure the Efficient Use of Transiting Exoplanet Characterization Missions},
author = {Robert T. Zellem and Anya Biferno and David R. Ciardi and Mary Dussault and Laura Peticolas and Martin Fowler and Kyle A. Pearson and Wilfred Gee and Rachel Zimmerman-Brachman and Denise Smith and Lynn Cominsky and Gael M. Roudier and Brandon Lawton and Robert Baer and Diana Dragomir and Nemanja Jovanovic and Marc Kuchner and Frank Sienkiewicz and Josh Walawender},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.07716},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
White Paper submitted to Astro2020 Science Call, 5 pages, 3 figures, community comments and involvement are welcome!