Transit Analysis Package: An IDL Graphical User Interface for Exoplanet Transit Photometry

Creators: Gazak, J. Zachary; Johnson, John A.; Tonry, John; Dragomir, Diana; Eastman, Jason; Mann, Andrew W.; Agol, Eric

Abstract

We present an IDL graphical user-interface-driven software package designed for the analysis of exoplanet transit light curves. The Transit Analysis Package (TAP) software uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques to fit light curves using the analytic model of Mandal and Agol (2002). The package incorporates a wavelet-based likelihood function developed by Carter and Winn (2009), which allows the MCMC to assess parameter uncertainties more robustly than classic X^2 methods by parameterizing uncorrelated "white" and correlated "red" noise. The software is able to simultaneously analyze multiple transits observed in different conditions (instrument, filter, weather, etc.). The graphical interface allows for the simple execution and interpretation of Bayesian MCMC analysis tailored to a user's specific data set and has been thoroughly tested on ground-based and Kepler photometry. This paper describes the software release and provides applications to new and existing data. Reanalysis of ground-based observations of TrES-1b, WASP-4b, and WASP-10b (Winn et al., 2007, 2009; Johnson et al., 2009; resp.) and space-based Kepler 4b–8b (Kipping and Bakos 2010) show good agreement between TAP and those publications. We also present new multi-filter light curves of WASP-10b and we find excellent agreement with previously published values for a smaller radius.

Additional Information

© 2012 J. Zachary Gazak et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Received 26 September 2011; Accepted 19 February 2012. The authors gratefully acknowledge discussions with Josh Carter relating to the new wavelet-based likelihood methods and David Kipping and Gáspár Bakos for responding thoughtfully to questions regarding their independent analysis of Kepler-4b through -8b. They thank the individuals who provided helpful insight and comments regarding early versions of TAP, including especially John Rayner, Karen Collins, and Kaspar von Braun. J. A. Johnson was supported by the NSF Grant AST-0702821. A. W. Mann was supported by NSF grant AST-0908419. For this work the authors made use of the UH 2.2 m telescope atop Mauna Kea. The authors wish to extend special thanks to those of Hawaiian ancestry on whose sacred mountain of Mauna Kea they are privileged to be guests. Without their generous hospitality, the observations presented herein would not have been possible.

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