Wide‐Field Millimagnitude Photometry with the HAT: A Tool for Extrasolar Planet Detection

By Gáspár Á. Bakos, R. W. Noyes, G. Kovacs, Krzysztof Zbigniew Stanek, D. Sasselov, I. Domsa. 2004

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We discuss the system requirements for obtaining millimagnitude photometric precision over a wide field using small‐aperture, short focal length telescope systems such as those being developed by a number of research groups to search for transiting extrasolar planets. We describe a Hungarian Automated Telescope (HAT) system, which attempts to meet these requirements. The attainable precision of HAT has been significantly improved by a technique in which the telescope is made to execute small pointing steps during each exposure so as to broaden the effective point‐spread function (PSF) of the system to a value more compatible with the pixel size of our CCD detector. Experiments during a preliminary survey (spring 2003) of two star fields with the HAT‐5 instrument allowed us to optimize the HAT photometric precision using this method of PSF broadening; in this way we have been able to achieve a precision as good as 2 mmag on brighter stars. We briefly describe development of a network of longitudinally spaced HAT telescopes (HATNet).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d6f1b13c23c112142d0fe2a0f6170fe81cefa610

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Citations in the corpus

Origin and evolution of the atmospheres of early Venus, Earth and Mars (2018, background): “Due to the huge number of exoplanets confirmed in recent years (e.g., Pollacco et al. 2006; Bakos et al. 2004; Auvergne et al. 2009; Borucki et al. 2010; Howe et al. 2014), a large population of planets with masses slightly larger than Solar System terrestrial planets but”
The effect of red noise on planetary transit detection (2006, background): “1See, for example, Alonso et al. (2004), Bakos et al. (2004), Bramich et al. (2005), Bruntt et al. (2003), Hidas et al. (2005), Hood et al. (2005), Kane et al. (2005), Rauer et al. (2004) and Udalski et al. (2002a), for a description of some planet transit surveys; see Charbonneau et al. (2006) for…”
IMPROVED SPECTROSCOPIC PARAMETERS FOR TRANSITING PLANET HOSTS (2012, methodology): “For the purpose of this comparison the new SME results obtained here have been augmented with other SME-based results from the literature , relying mostly on HIRES spectra obtained by the HATNet project (Bakos et al. 2004).”
DISCOVERY OF A TRANSITING PLANET AND EIGHT ECLIPSING BINARIES IN HATNet FIELD G205 (2009, background): “The HATNet telescopes HAT-5, HAT-6, HAT-8, and HAT9 (HATNet; Bakos et al. 2002, 2004) observed HATNet field G205, centered at α = 22h56m, δ = +37◦30′, on a nightly basis between 2003 September 29 and 2004 February 1, and between 2006 July 3 and 2006 July 24.”
HAT-P-11b: A SUPER-NEPTUNE PLANET TRANSITING A BRIGHT K STAR IN THE KEPLER FIELD (2009, background): “One of the wide-field surveys involved in the detection of TEP’s is the HATNet survey (Bakos et al. 2002, 2004), which currently operates 6 small fully-automated 13 Of course, the first and most prominent one being HD 209458b (Charbonneau et al. 2000; Henry et al. 2000). wide-field telescopes.”
HAT-P-7b: An Extremely Hot Massive Planet Transiting a Bright Star in the Kepler Field (2008, background): “The HATNet telescopes HAT-7 and HAT-8 (HATNet; Bakos et al. 2002, 2004) observed HATNet field G154, centered at α = 19h12m, δ = +45◦00′, on a near-nightly basis from 2004 May 27 to 2004 August 6.”
The NASA Exoplanet Archive: Data and Tools for Exoplanet Research (2013, background): “…surveys such as the Transatlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) (Alonso et al. 2004), the XO project (McCullough et al. 2005), the Hungarian Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) (Bakos et al. 2004), SuperWASP (Pollacco et al. 2006), and Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) (Pepper et al. 2007).”
A PHOTOMETRIC VARIABILITY SURVEY OF FIELD K AND M DWARF STARS WITH HATNet (2009, methodology): “For details on the system design and observing procedure see Bakos et al. (2004, 2006); here, we briefly review a few points that are relevant to the survey presented in this paper.”
THE TRANSITING EXOPLANET SURVEY SATELLITE: SIMULATIONS OF PLANET DETECTIONS AND ASTROPHYSICAL FALSE POSITIVES (2015, background): “Previous wide-field transit surveys, such as HAT (Bakos et al. 2004), TrES (Alonso et al. 2004), XO (McCullough et al. 2005), WASP (Pollacco et al. 2006), and KELT (Pepper et al. 2007), have been conducted with ground-based telescopes.”
A trend filtering algorithm for wide-field variability surveys (2004, unknown): “These include narrow PSF, crowded field, differential extinction and refraction (see Bakos et al. 2004, hereafter B04, for a more comprehensive summary).”
Homogeneous studies of transiting extrasolar planets - III. Additional planets and stellar models (2010, methodology): “HAT-P-1 was found to be a TEP by Bakos et al. (2007a) from data taken by the HAT survey (Bakos et al. 2002, 2004).”
WASP-121 b: a hot Jupiter close to tidal disruption transiting an active F star (2015, background): “Most of the transiting exoplanets found by ground-based transit surveys (e.g. WASP, Pollacco et al. 2006; HATNet, Bakos et al. 2004) are Jovian-type planets with orbital periods of just a few days, these planets being the easiest to detect for such surveys.”
SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates XVII. The physical properties of giant exoplanets within 400 days of period (2015, background): “In this figure, we make the distinction between the secured and likely exoplanets and show the other EGPs21 detected and characterised by ground-based observatories like Super-WASP (Pollacco et al. 2006), HAT (Bakos et al. 2004), and from the CoRoT space telescope (Baglin et al. 2006).”
High-precision photometry by telescope defocussing. I. The transiting planetary system WASP-5 (2009, methodology): “Finally, PSF broadening has been performed both by moving the telescope during individual exposures (Bakos et al. 2004) and by shuffling charge at will round an orthogonal-transfer CCD device (Tonry et al. 2005; Johnson et al. 2008).”
HAT-P-16b: A 4 MJ PLANET TRANSITING A BRIGHT STAR ON AN ECCENTRIC ORBIT, (2010, background): “…(e.g. Torres et al. (2010)) discoveries are primarily the result of dedicated ground– based searches, such as SuperWASP (Pollacco et al. 2006), HATNet (Bakos et al. 2004), TrES (Alonso et al. 2004) and XO (McCullough et al. 2005), and spaceborne searches, such as CoRoT (Baglin et al. 2006) and…”