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Besides hunting from transits in a specific patch of sky, IRVEES has another goal: confirm more planets around nearby stars by Direct Imaging. I have picked out 10 target stars all within 15 light-years from Earth, but a popular and mysterious star in that group is Lalande 21185. PROJECT LALANDE With Project Lalande, the IRVEES program will use a variety of detection methods to pick up any planets. It will mostly use Direct Imaging with large scopes and a coronagraph, but the transit method can be used for other observations. There have been multiple other searches for planetary companions around Lalande 21185. In the early 1950's through 60's, Peter van de Kamp and his student Sarah Lippincott made multiple claims for finding planets via photographic plates. These claims were blown out of the water in 1974. Over 20 years later, in 1996, George Gatewood made the claim of finding more planets via astrometry. This was also proven to be a mistake. Since then, there have not been many other searches. Project Lalande takes on this challenge in a different way. Instead of using the classic radial velocity method or the confusing astrometry, this search will take images of the system. Why not radial velocity? Well, other scientists like Geoff Marcy have shown that the RV of Lalande 21185 is "stable," meaning that there aren't many or any large planets, and little stellar activity. Imaging will be easier on Lalande 21185 because of its size and close distance. When the search begins, small coronagraphs will be distributed. How I will make and distribute them is still on the drawing board. But these instruments will be able to block out Lalande 21185 while exposing regions closer to the star. See the main IRVEES thread for instructions on direct imaging. Those same steps will be used for Project Lalande. MEMBERS: @ProtoJeb21 STATUS: NOT ACTIVE YET DATA: -None Yet-
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TEMS (Transiting Exoplanet Moon Search) One of the main goals of the IRVEES program is to not just find exoplanets, but also exomoons. The hunt for moons of exoplanets has not gone very well. There's a group called HEK (Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler) that tries to find Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) caused by an orbiting exomoon. So far, they haven't found any. But that doesn't mean this method isn't successful; it's just the target's sizes and differences. Most of HEK's targets are either hundreds of light years away, or have dim host stars, or are rather small exoplanets. I plan to take on that challenge. With TEMS (Transiting Exoplanet Moon Search), not just any planets are selected. They first have to pass at least 2 of these three Checkpoints that will determine if they may have a moon and if it can be detected: Is it close enough to Earth? Can it easily be detected by the transit method? Is its host star brighter than magnitude 15.5? Distance from the planet system to Earth is the most flexible of the Checkpoints because of how the other two affect it. If the system's star is over 1,000 light-years away but the star is brighter than magnitude 15.5 and the planet can easily be spotted, then the distance can be up to 3,000 light-years. However, to make TEMS results as clear as possible, systems within 1,000 light-years should be considered. A good system is 55 Cancri A (Copernicus). Next is how well the planet can be detected. A small planet orbiting a large star can slip through the imaging software on some telescopes, making TTVs impossible to find. But a planet that can be detected with a minimum scope of 10-15" is a good choice for TEMS. Finally is the star's brightness. A dim star doesn't have a huge effect on TEMS, but a target system that can't be seen is a huge issue. Now that those Checkpoints are out of the way, there is one other thing that needs to be considered: whether or not a target planet can even have a moon. To find out if a moon can be stable around the planet for at least 0.6 billion years, I would have to use Universe Sandbox 2. If the moon is destroyed or ejected withing 0.6-1 billion years, then the target planet will no longer be a target. Target Exoplanets: Ourania (Kepler-11g) Kepler-443b Aristaios (Kepler-452b) Hubal (WASP-14 Ab) HAT-P-2b Potential Targets: Kepler-18d Kepler-32d Kepler-37d Kepler-89e Kepler-14b In order for a moon to be confirmed, the TTVs must be very small and happen "randomly." Since the planet's year and the moon's orbital period won't be the same, the TTVs would seem to be random. However, I will probably update this with a better confirmation method. Candidate Exomoons: None ATM Confirmed Exomoons: None ATM People can help participate in TEMS if they want to. All they would need to do is review the timing of each transit, if there is a huge amount of data to work with. Several people may need to go over 1 data set if multiple planetary transits were observed. Members: @ProtoJeb21 (Me) @kunok Potential Members: @Spaceception @RocketSquid @OrbitalBuzzsaw The schedule of TEMS will be very similar to the regular IRVEES schedule. Also, I may try to look for moons of my own planets. Schedule: June 14th: Observations of HAT-P-22b starting at 22:37 UST; Getting used to equipment and collecting first data set to find a possible moon to this planet. *Note: Kepler-32d's host star is magnitude 15.1. That may be too low to be a target system of TEMS.
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This is a detailed list of exoplanets (and possibly exomoons) observed, analysed, and discovered by the IRVEES program. Some of these planets are currently known ones that have been detected for practice, or analysed to find out more information on them. Most of the planets are candidates I have found with Planet Hunters, and may stay that way for several weeks. I might post the light curves of each candidate exoplanet. STUDIED KNOWN EXOPLANETS HAT-P-22b: One of the multiple Hot Jupiter exoplanets discovered by the HATNet Project. HAT-P-22b is 2.15 times the mass of Jupiter with a diameter 8% larger. It has a density of 2.26 g/cm3 and about 4.86 times Earth's gravity. HAT-P-22b was the first exoplanet monitored and detected by IRVEES, even though it was previously known to the scientific community. However, unlike other massive gas giants, it will not go through further analysis for possible moons, due to a small sphere of influence. It orbits a G5V main sequence star in Ursa Major that may have a K-Type binary companion. TBD EXOPLANETS DISCOVERED BY IRVEES None yet PLANET HUNTERS CANDIDATES KIC 9529088.01: A small signal in the light curve APH00013fk. The transit blocks about 0.09% of the light of the host star once every 1.5 days (about 35.85 hours). The host star is a K-Dwarf of magnitude 14.365 with the catalog number of KIC 9529088. If confirmed, this may be a Mini Neptune or a Super-Earth between temperatures of 800 and 1500 Kelvin. However, the signal of this object may be caused by the variability of KIC 9529088. My best estimate of the star's radius is between 0.65 and 0.55 solar Radii. KIC 10712631.01: A moderate sized but somewhat obscured signal in the light curve APH0001311. The potential planet blocked 0.26% of the light of its magnitude 15.926 K-Type host star. KIC 10712631 produces moderate levels of noise, and is a slight but predictable variable star. These variations make an M-shape with two main dips. The first takes about 8 days, and the second about 7 days. In comparison, the potential planet orbits about every 6 days with a transit lasting up to 5-6 hours. KIC 7825899.09: A strong transit signal in the light curve of the late-K dwarf KIC 7825899 (0.837 solar radii). This was the ninth reported transit in the light curve of that specific star, but it is unknown if my transit is the same as some of the others found. The object blocked 0.37% of its host star's light, suggesting that it has a radius no larger than 3.45 Earth Radii. It probably will be confirmed within a month.
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This here is a list of the scientific achievements done by IRVEES. Here, there will be milestones and important events that the IRVEES program has gone through, along with important discoveries that don't exactly relate to exoplanets. Keep in mind that there won't be any specific exoplanet discoveries here; They will be on another forum thread. 6-14-16 Detecting the transit of HAT-P-22b and observing the star's binary companion. Imaging the galaxy M106 and its possible companion NGC 4248. Confirming the newly discovered asteroid XL16A7 (nicknamed "Bob").