Wide-field millimagnitude photometry with HAT A Tool for Extra-solar Planet Detection.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 4 0 1 2 1 9 v 3 2 0 J a n 2 0 0 4 DRAFT Wide-field millimagnitude photometry with HAT: A Tool for Extra-solar Planet Detection G. Bakos1,2,3 R. W. Noyes1, G. Kova?cs2, K. Z. Stanek1, D. D. Sasselov1 and Istva?n Domsa2 gbakos,rnoyes,kstanek,dsasselov@; kovacs,domsa@konkoly.hu ABSTRACT We discuss the system requirements for obtaining millimagnitude photomet- ric precision over a wide field using small aperture short focal length telescope systems, such as are being developed by a number of research groups to search for transiting extra-solar planets. We describe the Hungarian-made Automated Telescope (HAT) system which attempts to meet these requirements. The attain- able 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 of the system to a value more compat- ible 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 have been able to achieve a precision as good as 2 millimagnitudes on brighter stars. We briefly describe development of a network of HAT telescopes (HATnet) spaced in longitude. Subject headings: instrumentation: miscellaneous – telescopes – techniques: pho- tometric – stars: planetary systems, variables – methods: data analysis 1. Introduction The discovery of the transiting planet HD 209458b (Charbonneau et al. 2000; Henry et al. 2000) was a landmark in exoplanet research. It established that at least some substellar 1Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden street, Cambridge, MA02138 2Konkoly Observatory, Budapest, H-1525, P.O. Box 67 3Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory – 2 – companions to stars found in close orbits (～ 0.05 AU) by radial velocity