RE: TrES-1 Exoplanet Report

[Michael Gutzwiller <deepsky@fuse.net>]

Actually I did see a portion of a transit of HD209458 two years ago.  The
message is still in the email archives at
http://stupendous.rit.edu/tass/mailarchive/2002-07/msg00105.html

The photometry is good enough to confirm an exoplanet but detecting one that
isn't know would be a stretch.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-tass@listserv.wwa.com [mailto:owner-tass@listserv.wwa.com]On
Behalf Of Stupendous Man
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 2:38 PM
To: tass@listserv.wwa.com
Cc: mwrsps@rit.edu
Subject: Re: TrES-1 Exoplanet Report



  Robert wrote:

> Astrobiology [1] is mentioning a paper [2] showing
> how small scopes can be used to to contribute to the
> discovery of exoplanets.

  Tom answered:

> Mike Gutzwiller used his tass telescope to confirm an exoplanet ....

  Well, actually, Mike G. showed that it would be _possible_ to confirm
a transit by an extrasolar planet with a TASS unit.  He didn't actually
carry out the observations.

  Robert went on ...

> Also, if anyone wants to go into it deeply enough are
> the current data redecution methods significantly similar
> to or different from the methods discussed in the paper?

  The TASS reductions are significantly different from those
described in the TrES paper in two ways:

     - we do not reduce a set of image of the same field as an ensemble,
           but treat each V,I pair individually.  This decreases
           the precision of our measurements

     - we use simple aperture photometry, whereas the TrES group
           uses an image subtraction method to look specifically
           for variations in brightness

  If one were to point a TASS camera at one region of the sky
for long periods, as TrES do, one would need to reduce the images
using something other than the standard TASS pipeline to squeeze
the last few percent out of the data.

                                            Michael Richmond