Talk abstract details
Validating the smallest CoRoT candidates with PASTIS: some examples
Abstract
The Transit search method to detect exoplanets is contaminated by “false positives”, produced by one of several kinds of configurations involving eclipsing binaries. Follow-up observations are used to reveal the true nature of the candidates. These observational efforts run into difficulties due, on one hand, to the faintness of the typical targets (specially for CoRoT and Kepler candidates), and in the other, due to the small-amplitude signals produced by small-mass planets. As a consequence many small planet candidates remain unsolved. We are developing a tool, called PASTIS, to solve these cases using all the available data including the light-curve, photometry, radial velocity data, etc. We use bayesian methods to fit the data with different models and to compare and quantify the relative probability of different scenarios. In this way we plan to validate most of the currently unsolved cases and to increase the number of small planets confirmed. In this talk, we will present some example of the planet validation process with PASTIS.