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Published September 1, 2009 | Published
Journal Article Open

Observational Window Functions in Planet Transit Surveys

Abstract

The probability that an existing planetary transit is detectable in one's data is sensitively dependent upon the window function of the observations. We quantitatively characterize and provide visualizations of the dependence of this probability as a function of orbital period upon several observing strategy and astrophysical parameters, such as length of observing run, observing cadence, length of night, transit duration and depth, and the minimum number of sampled transits. The ability to detect a transit is directly related to the intrinsic noise of the observations. In our simulations of observational window functions, we explicitly address noncorrelated (Gaussian or white) noise and correlated (red) noise and discuss how these two noise components affect transit detectability in fundamentally different manners, especially for long periods and/or small transit depths. We furthermore discuss the consequence of competing effects on transit detectability, elaborate on measures of observing strategies, and examine the projected efficiency of different transit survey scenarios with respect to certain regions of parameter space.

Additional Information

© 2009 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 1 (2009 September 1); received 2009 April 29; accepted for publication 2009 July 10; published 2009 August 14. We thank S. Seager, G. Mallén-Ornelas, and B. L. Lee for many helpful discussions about window functions, and F. Pont for invaluable assistance with red noise considerations. We furthermore express our thanks to R. Alonso, J. Pepper, and B. S. Gaudi for sharing insights into their ground-based and space-based data with respect to red noise characteristics and decorrelation timescales. Finally, we extend our gratitude to the anonymous referee for comments, encouragement, and a very insightful suggestion that noticeably improved the quality of the manuscript, as well as the scientific editor for pointing out a number of shortcomings with respect to mentioning and giving credit to the much more rigorous treatment of red noise in the mathematics and statistics literature. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC/NExScl Star and Exoplanet Database, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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August 21, 2023
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