A Search for the Transit of HD 168443b: Improved Orbital Parameters and Photometry

Creators: Pilyavsky, Genady; Mahadevan, Suvrath; Kane, Stephen R.; Howard, Andrew W.; Ciardi, David R.; De Pree, Chris; Dragomir, Diana; Fischer, Debra; Henry, Gregory W.; Jensen, Eric L. N.; Laughlin, Gregory; Marlowe, Hannah; Rabus, Markus; von Braun, Kaspar; Wright, Jason T.; Wang, Xuesong X.

Abstract

The discovery of transiting planets around bright stars holds the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of planetary atmospheres. In this work we present the search for transits of HD 168443b, a massive planet orbiting the bright star HD 168443 (V = 6.92) with a period of 58.11 days. The high eccentricity of the planetary orbit (e = 0.53) significantly enhances the a priori transit probability beyond that expected for a circular orbit, making HD 168443 a candidate for our ongoing Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey. Using additional radial velocities from Keck High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer, we refined the orbital parameters of this multi-planet system and derived a new transit ephemeris for HD 168443b. The reduced uncertainties in the transit window make a photometric transit search practicable. Photometric observations acquired during predicted transit windows were obtained on three nights. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory 1.0 m photometry acquired on 2010 September 7 had the required precision to detect a transit but fell just outside of our final transit window. Nightly photometry from the T8 0.8 m automated photometric telescope at Fairborn Observatory, acquired over a span of 109 nights, demonstrates that HD 168443 is constant on a timescale of weeks. Higher-cadence photometry on 2011 April 28 and June 25 shows no evidence of a transit. We are able to rule out a non-grazing transit of HD 168443b.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2011 July 14; accepted 2011 September 21; published 2011 December 2. This work made use of the SIMBAD database (operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France), NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services, and the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (NStED). This work was partially supported by funding from the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, supported by the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. The authors thank Andrés Jordán for providing support for the observations at CTIO. G.W.H. acknowledges support from NASA, NSF, Tennessee State University, and the Tennessee Centers of Excellence Program. E.L.N.J. acknowledges support from NSF Grant AST-0721386. M.R. acknowledges support from ALMA-CONICYT projects 31090015 and 31080021. We thank the referee for insightful comments that helped us to improve this paper. Finally, the authors wish to extend special thanks to those of Hawai'ian ancestry on whose sacred mountain of Mauna Kea we are privileged to be guests. Without their generous hospitality, the Keck observations presented herein would not have been possible.

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