Improved Orbital Parameters and Transit Monitoring for HD 156846b
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.
Additional Information
© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2011 January 23; accepted 2011 March 17; published 2011 April 29. The authors thank the anonymous referee, whose comments greatly improved the quality of the paper. 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. The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is supported by the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. 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.Attached Files
Published - Kane2011p13966Astrophys_J.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 23847
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110531-153802299
- Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds
- Created
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2011-06-01Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)