The Search for Transiting Extrasolar Planets in the Open Cluster M52
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THE SEARCH FOR TRANSITING EXTRASOLAR PLANETS IN THE OPEN CLUSTER M52 A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of San Diego State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Sciences in Astronomy by Tiffany M. Borders Summer 2008 SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY The Undersigned Faculty Committee Approves the Thesis of Tiffany M. Borders: The Search for Transiting Extrasolar Planets in the Open Cluster M52 Eric L. Sandquist, Chair Department of Astronomy William Welsh Department of Astronomy Calvin Johnson Department of Physics Approval Date iii Copyright 2008 by Tiffany M. Borders iv DEDICATION To all who seek new worlds. v Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. –Booker T. Washington All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts... –William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, Act 2 Scene 7 vi ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Search for Transiting Extrasolar Planets in the Open Cluster M52 by Tiffany M. Borders Master of Sciences in Astronomy San Diego State University, 2008 In this survey we attempt to discover short-period Jupiter-size planets in the young open cluster M52. Ten nights of R-band photometry were used to search for planetary transits. We obtained light curves of 4,128 stars and inspected them for variability. No planetary transits were apparent; however, some interesting variable stars were discovered. In total, 22 variable stars were discovered of which, 19 were not previously known as variable. Ten of our variable stars were identified as eclipsing-type W Ursa Majoris contact binaries, 5 were identified as detached binaries of the Algol type, 1 was identified as a slowly pulsating B star, and 6 were irregular and require further investigation before they can be classified. A color-magnitude diagram constructed from V and R photometry with fitted isochrones is also presented to help determine cluster membership of our variable stars. We find that 3 of our W Uma stars lie within a region of high cluster membership probability. Radial velocity follow up observations are needed to confirm cluster membership. If confirmed, this would be highly interesting as W Uma stars are not excepted to be found in such a young cluster. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT .................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES.............................................................................. ix LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................ x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1 1.1 Planetary Transits ............................................................... 1 1.2 Fraction of Stars withPlanets .................................................. 5 1.3 Planet-Metallicity Correlation .................................................. 6 1.4 OpenClusters ................................................................... 8 1.5 M52.............................................................................. 9 2 OBSERVATIONS OF M52............................................................ 11 3 DATAREDUCTION .................................................................. 14 3.1 Overscan Correction and Trimming............................................ 14 3.2 BiasRemoval.................................................................... 14 3.3 FlatFielding..................................................................... 15 3.4 Correcting Bad Pixels........................................................... 15 3.5 Header Corrections.............................................................. 15 3.6 ImageRejection................................................................. 16 4 ISIS ..................................................................................... 17 4.1 ISISSetup ....................................................................... 17 4.2 The interp.csh Routine.......................................................... 17 4.3 The ref.csh Routine ............................................................. 18 4.4 The subtract.csh Routine ....................................................... 20 4.5 The detect.csh Routine.......................................................... 23 4.6 The find.csh Routine ............................................................ 24 4.7 The phot.csh Routine ........................................................... 24 5 PLANETARY TRANSIT SEARCH .................................................. 28 viii 5.1 Box Least Square Algorithm ................................................... 28 5.2 BLS Implementation............................................................ 30 5.3 SYSREM ........................................................................ 33 5.4 Transit Selection Criteria ....................................................... 34 5.5 Planetary Transit Results ....................................................... 35 6 VARIABILITY......................................................................... 56 6.1 Period Determination ........................................................... 57 6.2 Variability Results............................................................... 64 6.2.1 W UMaVariables.......................................................... 64 6.2.2 Slowly PulsatingB Stars .................................................. 75 6.2.3 Detached Eclipsing Binaries .............................................. 75 6.2.4 Irregular Variables or Unclassified........................................ 85 7 CONCLUSION ........................................................................ 95 REFERENCES ................................................................................. 96 ix LIST OF TABLES PAGE Table1.1 ........................................................................................ 2 Table 2.1 R Filter Observations of M52....................................................... 11 Table 2.2 V Filter Observations of M52....................................................... 12 Table 4.1 ISIS Process Configuration File .................................................... 18 Table 4.2 ISIS Default Configuration File..................................................... 20 Table 4.3 ISIS Phot Configuration File........................................................ 21 Table 5.1 Input Parameters Used in BLS ..................................................... 33 Table 5.2 BLS Results.......................................................................... 36 Table 5.3 BLS Final Results ................................................................... 36 Table 6.1 Variable Star Information ........................................................... 57 x LIST OF FIGURES PAGE Figure 1.1 Light curve of HD209458b from Brown et al. (2001) showing the characteristic light curve of a planetary transit. ...................................... 4 Figure 1.2 Figure from Fischer & Valenti 2005 shows the occurrence of exo- planets vs iron abundance [Fe/H] of the host star measured spectroscop- ically. The occurrence of observed giant planets increases strongly with stellar metallicity. The solid line is a power law fit for the probability that a star has a detected planet. ...................................................... 7 Figure 2.1 CMD with overlaid theoretical isochrones obtained from Cassisi et al. (2006). ............................................................................. 13 Figure 4.1 Composite reference image from ISIS............................................. 19 Figure 4.2 var.fits produced from ISIS . Most of the really bright spots are satu- rated stars. ............................................................................. 25 Figure 5.1 BLS example results from Kovacs et al. (2002) from a test set of data. This shows the time series in the upper panel, the normalized BLS frequency spectrum and the folded time series in the lower panel. The signal parameters are displayed at the top where n is the number of bins, P0 is the period, q is the fractional transit length, δ is the transit depth, and δ/σ istheSNR. ................................................................... 31 Figure 5.2 The top panel shows the RMS of the 4128 stars which appear on the var.fits and have 323 out of 423 observations. The middle panel shows the RMS of the 3935 stars remaining after filters have been applied. The bottom panel shows the 1238 stars remaining which are suitable for BLS study after filters were applied including an RMS < 0.015 magnitude cutoff. ..... 32 Figure 5.3 Binned phased plot for candidate ID 1956. ...................................... 38 Figure 5.4 Phase vs. unbinned delta magnitude of the points in transit for can- didate ID 1956. Error bars have been added to convey the uncertainty in the residual flux within the transit phase. ............................................. 39 Figure 5.5 Residuals of candidate ID 1956. Major time-axis tick marks are spaced by 2.4 hours. The time-axis is defined as the Heliocentric Julian Date (HJD(i)) subtracted from the Heliocentric Julian Date of the first observation (HJD(1)) taken on August 24th. ......................................... 40 Figure 5.6 Normalized signal residue versus trial frequency for candidate ID 1956. The