Improved Orbital Parameters and Transit Monitoring for HD 156846b

May 2011 • 2011ApJ...733...28K

Authors • Kane, Stephen R. • Howard, Andrew W. • Pilyavsky, Genady • Mahadevan, Suvrath • Henry, Gregory W. • von Braun, Kaspar • Ciardi, David R. • Dragomir, Diana • Fischer, Debra A. • Jensen, Eric • Laughlin, Gregory • Ramirez, Solange V. • Wright, Jason T.

Abstract • HD 156846b is a Jovian planet in a highly eccentric orbit (e = 0.85) with a period of 359.55 days. The pericenter passage at a distance of 0.16 AU is nearly aligned to our line of sight, offering an enhanced transit probability of 5.4% and a potentially rich probe of the dynamics of a cool planetary atmosphere impulsively heated during close approach to a bright star (V = 6.5). We present new radial velocity (RV) and photometric measurements of this star as part of the Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey. The RV measurements from the Keck-High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer reduce the predicted transit time uncertainty to 20 minutes, an order of magnitude improvement over the ephemeris from the discovery paper. We photometrically monitored a predicted transit window under relatively poor photometric conditions, from which our non-detection does not rule out a transiting geometry. We also present photometry that demonstrates stability at the millimagnitude level over its rotational timescale.

Links

• SIMBAD http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbo.pl?bibcode=2011ApJ...733...28K
• PDF https://stacks.iop.org/0004-637X/733/28/pdf
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4127
• DATA http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/DisplayOverview/nph-DisplayOverview?type=REFERENCE&bibcode=2011ApJ...733...28K
• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.1088%2F0004-637X%2F733%2F1%2F28