English

Transiting Extrasolar Planet with a Companion: Effects of Orbital Eccentricity and Inclination

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-05-18 v2 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

Continuing work initiated in an earlier publication [Sato and Asada, PASJ, 61, L29 (2009)], we consider light curves influenced by the orbital inclination and eccentricity of a companion in orbit around a transiting extrasolar planet (in a planet-satellite system or a hypothetical true binary). We show that the semimajor axis, eccentricity and inclination angle of a `moon' orbit around the host planet can be determined by transit method alone. For this purpose, we present a formulation for the parameter determinations in a small-eccentricity approximation as well as in the exact form. As a result, the semimajor axis is expressed in terms of observables such as brightness changes, transit durations and intervals in light curves. We discuss also a narrow region of parameters that produce a mutual transit by an extrasolar satellite.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1002.0637,
  title  = {Transiting Extrasolar Planet with a Companion: Effects of Orbital Eccentricity and Inclination},
  author = {Masanao Sato and Hideki Asada},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.0637},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

29 pages, 11 figures, 1 table; orbital inclination included, parameter region considered; accepted for publication in PASJ