Young Exoplanet Transit Initiative (YETI)
Abstract
We present the Young Exoplanet Transit Initiative (YETI), in which we use several 0.2 to 2.6m telescopes around the world to monitor continuously young (< 100 Myr), nearby (< 1 kpc) stellar clusters mainly to detect young transiting planets (and to study other variability phenomena on time-scales from minutes to years). The telescope network enables us to observe the targets continuously for several days in order not to miss any transit. The runs are typically one to two weeks long, about three runs per year per cluster in two or three subsequent years for about ten clusters. There are thousands of stars detectable in each field with several hundred known cluster members, e.g. in the first cluster observed, Tr-37, a typical cluster for the YETI survey, there are at least 469 known young stars detected in YETI data down to R=16.5 mag with sufficient precision of 50 milli-mag rms (5 mmag rms down to R=14.5 mag) to detect transits, so that we can expect at least about one young transiting object in this cluster. If we observe 10 similar clusters, we can expect to detect approximately 10 young transiting planets with radius determinations. The precision given above is for a typical telescope of the YETI network, namely the 60/90-cm Jena telescope (similar brightness limit, namely within +/-1 mag, for the others) so that planetary transits can be detected. For planets with mass and radius determinations, we can calculate the mean density and probe the internal structure. We aim to constrain planet formation models and their time-scales by discovering planets younger than 100 Myr and determining not only their orbital parameters, but also measuring their true masses and radii, which is possible so far only by the transit method. Here, we present an overview and first results. (Abstract shortened)
Cite
@article{arxiv.1106.4244,
title = {Young Exoplanet Transit Initiative (YETI)},
author = {R. Neuhäuser and R. Errmann and A. Berndt and G. Maciejewski and H. Takahashi and W. P. Chen and D. P. Dimitrov and T. Pribulla and E. H. Nikogossian and E. L. N. Jensen and L. Marschall and Z. -Y. Wu and A. Kellerer and F. M. Walter and C. Briceño and R. Chini and M. Fernandez and St. Raetz and G. Torres and D. W. Latham and S. N. Quinn and A. Niedzielski and Ł. Bukowiecki and G. Nowak and T. Tomov and K. Tachihara and S. C. -L. Hu and L. W. Hung and D. P. Kjurkchieva and V. S. Radeva and B. M. Mihov and L. Slavcheva-Mihova and I. N. Bozhinova and J. Budaj and M. Vaňko and E. Kundra and Ľ. Hambálek and V. Krushevska and T. Movsessian and H. Harutyunyan and J. J. Downes and J. Hernandez and V. H. Hoffmeister and D. H. Cohen and I. Abel and R. Ahmad and S. Chapman and S. Eckert and J. Goodman and A. Guerard and H. M. Kim and A. Koontharana and J. Sokol and J. Trinh and Y. Wang and X. Zhou and R. Redmer and U. Kramm and N. Nettelmann and M. Mugrauer and J. Schmidt and M. Moualla and C. Ginski and C. Marka and C. Adam and M. Seeliger and S. Baar and T. Roell and T. O. B. Schmidt and L. Trepl and T. Eisenbeiß and S. Fiedler and N. Tetzlaff and E. Schmidt and M. M. Hohle and M. Kitze and N. Chakrova and C. Gräfe and K. Schreyer and V. V. Hambaryan and C. H. Broeg and J. Koppenhoefer and A. K. Pandey},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1106.4244},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
15 pages, 10 figures, AN accepted 2011 June 15