Poster abstract details
Searching for transiting planets around M dwarfs: results of a 1-year photometric survey
Abstract
A recently completed site characterization study carried out at the Astronomical Observatory of the Autonomous Region of the Aosta Valley (OAVdA) demonstrated that this site is well-poised to host a long-term photometric transit search for small-size planets around cool stars in the solar neighborhood.
Since December 2009 we are monitoring photometrically a sample of M dwarfs within 25 pc of the Sun. This is the preparatory study for a large-scale observing campaign of several hundred M dwarfs which, starting at the beginning of 2011, will be carried out with an array of small, identical telescopes.
In this pilot study, each star in our sample is monitored over a period of several weeks. In addition to placing constraints on the presence of short-period, small-size transiting planets, the high-cadence, high-precision photometric monitoring of our targets makes possible an accurate characterization of their microvariability properties. These data are helping us understanding the impact on transiting planets detectability due to the presence of activity-related phenomena in the datasets.
Here we present the preliminary results from 11 months of observations, briefly describing the first steps undertaken to implement a long-term photometric survey of a well-defined, large sample of nearby cool stars.
Since December 2009 we are monitoring photometrically a sample of M dwarfs within 25 pc of the Sun. This is the preparatory study for a large-scale observing campaign of several hundred M dwarfs which, starting at the beginning of 2011, will be carried out with an array of small, identical telescopes.
In this pilot study, each star in our sample is monitored over a period of several weeks. In addition to placing constraints on the presence of short-period, small-size transiting planets, the high-cadence, high-precision photometric monitoring of our targets makes possible an accurate characterization of their microvariability properties. These data are helping us understanding the impact on transiting planets detectability due to the presence of activity-related phenomena in the datasets.
Here we present the preliminary results from 11 months of observations, briefly describing the first steps undertaken to implement a long-term photometric survey of a well-defined, large sample of nearby cool stars.