Spitzer IRAC Sparsely Sampled Phase Curve of the Exoplanet WASP-14b

Abstract

Motivated by a high Spitzer IRAC oversubscription rate, we present a new technique of randomly and sparsely sampling the phase curves of hot Jupiters. Snapshot phase curves are enabled by technical advances in precision pointing as well as careful characterization of a portion of the central pixel on the array. This method allows for observations which are a factor of approximately two more efficient than full phase curve observations, and are furthermore easier to insert into the Spitzer observing schedule. We present our pilot study from this program using the exoplanet WASP-14b. Data of this system were taken both as a sparsely sampled phase curve as well as a staring-mode phase curve. Both data sets, as well as snapshot-style observations of a calibration star, are used to validate this technique. By fitting our WASP-14b phase snapshot data set, we successfully recover physical parameters for the transit and eclipse depths as well as the amplitude and maximum and minimum of the phase curve shape of this slightly eccentric hot Jupiter. We place a limit on the potential phase to phase variation of these parameters since our data are taken over many phases over the course of a year. We see no evidence for eclipse depth variations compared to other published WASP-14b eclipse depths over a 3.5 year baseline.

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