We are carrying out a deep survey for transiting extrasolar planets in a 1 square degree field in the Galactic Plane. The images to date were taken using the Wide Field Imager on the ESO 2.2m telescope at La Silla. We present details of the analysis and initial results from the survey.

Owing to their small masses and radii, Ultracool Dwarfs (UCDs; late-M, L, and T dwarfs) may be excellent targets for planet searches and may afford astronomers the opportunity to detect terrestrial planets in the habitable zone. The precise measurements necessary to detect extrasolar planets orbiting UCDs represent a major challenge. We describe two efforts to obtain precise measurements of UCDs in the Near Infrared (NIR). The first involves the robotic NIR observatory PAIRITEL and efforts to obtain photometric precision sufficient for the detection of terrestrial planets transiting UCDs. The second effort involves precise radial velocity measurements of UCDs in the NIR and a survey undertaken with the NIRSPEC spectrograph on Keck.

The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) is a wide-field (26° × 26°) robotic survey telescope currently operating in Sonoita, Arizona. Assembled from commercial and off-the-shelf devices, KELT currently surveys ~40% of the Northern sky with sufficient precision to detect transiting planets around bright (8 < V < 12) stars. In the past several years of operation, over 30,000 science images have been acquired. Planet candidate selection and follow-up are currently underway. A brief overview of past and present survey operations, the data reduction pipeline, and initial results follows below.

HAT-South is a network of six identical, fully automated wide field telescopes, to be located at three sites (Chile: Las Campanas, Australia: Siding Springs, and Namibia: HESS site) in the Southern hemisphere. The primary purpose of the network is to detect and characterize a large number of extra-solar planets transiting nearby bright stars, and to explore their diversity. Operation of HAT-South is a collaboration among the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the Australian National University (ANU). The network is expected to be ready for initial science operations in 2009. The three sites will permit near round-the-clock monitoring of selected fields, and the continuous data-stream will greatly enhance recovery of transits. HAT-South will be sensitive to planetary transits down to R≈14 across a 128 square-degrees combined field of view, thereby targeting a large number of dwarfs with feasible confirmation-mode follow-up. We anticipate a yearly detection rate of approximately 25 planets transiting bright stars.

The orbital parameters of extra-solar planets have a significant impact on the probability that the planet will transit the host star. This was recently demonstrated by the transit detection of HD 17156b whose favourable eccentricity and argument of periastron dramatically increased its transit likelihood. We present a study which provides a quantitative analysis of how these two orbital parameters affect the geometric transit probability as a function of period. Further, we apply these results to known radial velocity planets and show that there are unexpectedly high transit probabilities for planets at relatively long periods. For a photometric monitoring campaign which aims to determine if the planet indeed transits, we calculate the significance of a null result and the subsequent constraints that may be applied to orbital parameters.

We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical experiment has been designed to test the performance of our approach in comparison with other variability filters and fitting techniques for stars of different magnitudes and planets of different radius and orbital period, as observed by the space missions CoRoT and Kepler. Here we report on the results of this experiment.

The Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) is a microlensing survey conducted at Mt. John Observatory in New Zealand. We searched transiting planet candidates from the MOA-I Galactic bulge data, which have been obtained with a 61cm B&C telescope from 2000 to 2005 for a microlensing search. Although this survey data were dedicated to microlensing, they are also quite useful for searching transiting objects because of the large number of stars monitored (~7 million) and the long span of the survey (~6 years). From our analysis, we found 58 transiting planet candidates. We are planning to follow up these candidates with high-precision spectroscopic and photometric observations for further selection, toward the detection of planets by radial velocity observations.

We present an algorithm for the removal of trends in time series data. The trends could be caused by various systematic and random noise sources such as cloud passages, change of airmass or CCD noise. In order to determine the trends, we select template stars based on a hierarchical clustering algorithm. The hierarchy tree is constructed using the similarity matrix of light curves of stars whose elements are the Pearson correlation values. A new bottom-up merging algorithm is developed to extract clusters of template stars that are highly correlated among themselves, and may thus be used to identify the trends. We then use the multiple linear regression method to de-trend all individual light curves based on these determined trends. Experimental results with simulated light curves which contain artificial trends and events are presented. We also applied our algorithm to TAOS (Taiwan-American Occultation Survey) wide field data observed with a 0.5m f/1.9 telescope equipped with 2k by 2k CCD. With our approach, we successfully removed trends and increased signal to noise in TAOS light curves.

TRUFAS is a wavelet-based algorithm developed for the rapid detection of planetary transits in the frame of the COROT space mission. We present the application of this algorithm to the first two observing fields of CoRoT data. In these, CoRoT has observed a total of about 20000 stars. The first CoRoT observing run, IRa01, covers 2 months, February and March 2007, followed by the 5-months long run LRc01. TRUFAS is a very fast algorithm delivering reliable detections. Here we show the results when TRUFAS was applied to these first two sets of data. In the first run, IRa01, TRUFAS found 10 planet candidates and 143 eclipsing binaries and in the LRc01 10 planet candidates and 124 binaries, with a processing that lasted only one night.

Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while in transit, making the Box-Least-Squares (BLS) transit detection method almost ineffective. Therefore, a modified version for the identification of CB planets was developed - CB-BLS. We show that using CB-BLS it is possible to find CB planets in the residuals of light curves of eclipsing binaries (EBs) that have noise levels of 1% or more. Using CB-BLS will allow us to use the massive ground- and space-based photometric surveys to look for these objects. Detecting transiting CB planets is expected to have a wide range of implications. For instance, the frequency of CB planets depends on the planetary formation mechanism - and planets in close pairs of stars provide a most restrictive constraint on planet formation models. Furthermore, understanding very high precision light curves is limited by stellar parameters - and since for EBs the stellar parameters are much better determined, the resultant planetary structure models will have significantly smaller error bars, maybe even small enough to challenge theory.

We present a matched filter algorithm to detect transits of planets that orbit both components of close eclipsing binaries in CoRoT targets. The formation of binary systems surrounded by disks is one of the most common outcomes of stellar formation; their detection would therefore constitute an important discovery. In an eclipsing binary system, the binary-planet alignment gives raised transit probabilities and the special transit shapes from circumbinary planets provide a unique identifier for their planetary nature; the problems of false alarms are largely avoided. CoRoT data have unprecedented time coverage and photometric precision that make them especially suitable for the search of transits of planets across eclipsing binaries. No reliable detections of circumbinary planets have been reported yet, and their discovery would constitute a new class of planets.

Gaia, an ESA cornerstone mission, will obtain of the order of 100 high-precision photometric observations over five years for tens of millions of stars with V < 17. The vast number of red dwarfs in this data set, with their correspondingly deep (high S/N) transits, makes it worthwhile to explore the possibility of detecting transits in such data. Searching for transits under these circumstances requires a very different approach from that used for a normal, highly-sampled transit survey if the search is to be performed in a reasonable amount of time. It should be possible to identify a portion of the transiting Hot Jupiter/M dwarf systems in the data set, if the photometry is as stable and precise as specified by design. This same approach could be applied to ground-based transit searches – a transit survey targeted at red dwarfs with Jupiter-sized companions.

The Universal Transit Modeller (UTM) is a light-curve simulator for all kinds of transiting or eclipsing configurations between arbitrary numbers of several types of objects, which may be stars, planets, planetary moons, and planetary rings. Applications of UTM to date have been mainly in the generation of light-curves for the testing of detection algorithms. For the preparation of such test for the Corot Mission, a special version has been used to generate multicolour light-curves in Corot's passbands. A separate fitting program, UFIT (Universal Fitter) is part of the UTM distribution and may be used to derive best fits to light-curves for any set of continuously variable parameters. UTM/UFIT is written in IDL code and its source is released in the public domain under the GNU General Public License.

The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often useful to have analytic approximations for the parameters as well as their uncertainties and covariances. Here we give such formulas, for the case of an exoplanet transiting a star with a uniform brightness distribution. When limb darkening is significant, our parameter sets are still useful, although our analytic formulas underpredict the covariances and uncertainties.

Several approaches have been followed for the analysis of the light curves of transiting extra-solar planets. From simple approximate algorithms and synthetic models to semi-analytical complete solutions. The different alternatives are discussed with their strengths and weaknesses. Analytical expressions can also provide a deeper insight into the main system parameters from the measurement of a few strategic points describing the shape of the light curve.

A brief demonstration of photometric light curves solutions for eight transiting exoplanets using the Phoebe 0.29c code is presented. We determined radii and inclinations for TrES-1b, TrES-2b, Wasp-1b, XO-1b, XO-2b, OGLE-TR-10b, OGLE-TR-111b and HD 189733b. All our results are in good agreement with the last results published.

Gaia, an ESA cornerstone mission, will obtain of the order of 100 high-precision photometric observations and lower precision radial velocity measurements over five years for around a billion stars – several hundred thousand of which will be eclipsing binaries. In order to extract the characteristics of these systems, a fully automated code must be available. During the process of this development, two tools that may be of use to the transit community have emerged: a very fast, simple, detached eclipsing binary simulator/solver based on a new approach and an interacting eclipsing binary simulator with most of the features of the Wilson-Devinney and Nightfall codes, but fully documented and written in easy-to-follow and highly portable Java. Currently undergoing development and testing, this code includes an intuitive graphical interface and an optimizer for the estimation of the physical parameters of the system.

A large program of multi-fibre (FLAMES) spectroscopic observations of the stellar population in two CoRoT/Exoplanet field with the GIRAFFE/VLT, took place in spring 2008. It aims at characterizing the brightest dwarf population and providing the ground for statistical analysis of the planetary population found by CoRoT.

To perform such an ambitious analysis, we use an automated software based on the MATISSE algorithm, originally designed for the GAIA/RVS spectral analysis. This software derives the atmospheric stellar parameters: effective temperature, surface gravity and the overall metallicity.

Further improvements are foreseen in order to measure also individual abundances. By comparing the main physical and chemical properties of the host stars to those of the stellar population they belong to, this will bring new insights into the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems and the star-planet connection.

A short overview of the motivation and techniques of the ground-based photometric follow-up program of the CoRoT mission is given.

DEMONEX is a low-cost, 0.5 meter, robotic telescope assembled mostly from commercially available parts dedicated to obtaining precise photometry of bright stars with transiting planets. This photometry will provide a homogeneous data set for all transits visible from its location at Winer Observatory in Sonoita, Arizona. We will also search for additional planets via transit timing variations, measure or place limits on the albedos from secondary eclipses, systematically search known radial velocity planets for those that transit, and follow up promising KELT candidates. Despite its modest size, the signal-to-noise ratio per transit is comparable to that obtained with larger, 1m-class telescopes because of its short readout time and high z-band quantum efficiency. However, its main strength is that it will be used every night for transit follow-up and gather an unprecedented data set on transiting planets. With the 24 known transiting planets and 112 radial velocity planets visible from Winer Observatory, over 90% of all nights have at least one full event to observe.