Related papers: The Random Transiter -- EPIC 249706694/HD 139139
We present ground-based observations from the Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) of three transits of Kepler-445c---a supposed super-Earth exoplanet with properties resembling GJ 1214b---and demonstrate that the transit depth is…
Violent variation of transit depths and an ingress-egress asymmetry of the transit light curve discovered in KIC 12557548 have been interpreted as evidences of a catastrophic evaporation of atmosphere with dust (M_p gtrsim 1 M_oplus/Gyr)…
Of the hundreds of exoplanets discovered using the radial velocity technique, many are orbiting close to their host stars with periods less than 10 days. One of these, HD 63454, is a young active K dwarf which hosts a Jovian planet in a…
Photometric survey data from the Kepler mission have been used to discover and characterize thousands of transiting exoplanet and eclipsing binary (EB) systems. These discoveries have enabled empirical studies of occurrence rates which…
The Kepler mission has revealed a great diversity of planetary systems and architectures, but most of the planets discovered by Kepler orbit faint stars. Using new data from the K2 mission, we present the discovery of a five planet system…
The Kepler mission, despite its conclusion over a decade ago, continues to offer a rich dataset for uncovering new astrophysical objects and phenomena. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive search for exocometary transit signatures…
We present results of our survey for planetary transits in the field of NGC 6940. We think nearly all of our observed stars are field stars. We have obtained high precision (3-10 millimags at the bright end) photometric observations of…
More than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed and among them almost 4,000 were discovered by the transit method. However, few transiting exoplanets have an orbital period greater than 100 days. Here we report a transit detection of…
We report 33 V-band observations by the Hereford Arizona Observatory (HAO) of the enigmatic star KIC 8462852 during the two week period 3-17 August 2017. We find a striking resemblance of these observations to the Kepler day 1540 dip with…
Observations of the star EPIC 220208795 (2MASS J01105556+0018507) reveal a single, deep and asymmetric eclipse, which we hypothesize is due to an eclipsing companion surrounded by a tilted and inclined opaque disk, similar to those seen…
A historical problem for indirect exoplanet detection has been contending with the intrinsic variability of the host star. If the variability is periodic, it can easily mimic various exoplanet signatures, such as radial velocity variations…
Planets in highly eccentric orbits form a class of objects not seen within our Solar System. The most extreme case known amongst these objects is the planet orbiting HD~20782, with an orbital period of 597~days and an eccentricity of 0.96.…
The star HD 147379 was recently announced as a host of a low-mass exoplanet by Reiners et al. (2017). That announcement included a discussion of the possible detection of a periodic signal in the radial velocity observations around 21.1…
The Kepler object KIC 12557548 shows irregular eclipsing behaviour with a constant 15.685 hr period, but strongly varying transit depth. In this paper we fit individual eclipses, in addition to fitting binned light curves, to learn more…
KIC 6131659 is a long-period (17.5 days) eclipsing binary discovered by the Kepler mission. We analyzed six quarters of Kepler data along with supporting ground-based photometric and spectroscopic data to obtain accurate values for the mass…
We present new observations of the multi-planet system HIP~41378, a bright star ($V$ = 8.9, $K_s$ = 7.7) with five known transiting planets. Observations in Campaign 5 of the K2 mission showed multiple transits of two Neptune-sized bodies…
The transit method is currently one of our best means for the detection of potentially habitable "Earth-like" exoplanets. In principle, given sufficiently high photometric precision, cool Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars could…
Exoplanetary systems closest to the Sun, with the brightest host stars, provide the most favorable opportunities for characterization studies of the host star and their planet(s). The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey uses…
We report the detection of transits by the 3.1 M_Jup companion to the V=8.17 G0V star HD 17156. The transit was observed by three independant observers on Sept. 9/10, 2007 (two in central Italy and one in the Canary Islands), who obtained…
This paper presents V- and g'-band observations of the F2V star KIC 8462852, which exhibited enigmatic fade patterns in Kepler mission data. We introduce a transit simulation model for interpretation of these fades, and use it to interpret…