Bibcode
Deeg, H.-J.; Martin, E.; Schneider, J.; Chevreton, M.; Doyle, L. R.; Jenkins, J. M.; Palaiologou, E.; Lee, W.-B.; Kim, H.-I.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions, vol. 13, Issue 3, pp.233-243
Advertised on:
1997
Citations
7
Refereed citations
6
Description
The TEP (Transits of Extrasolar Planets) network undertakes the only
current search for terrestrial sized planets around MS-Stars. TEP was
formed in 1994 to observe transits of extrasolar planets around
eclipsing binaries. The current search is concentrated on CM Draconis,
which is the lowest mass eclipsing binary known (dM4.5/dM4.5). It is
also relatively close (17 pc), has a period of 1.26 d, and its orbital
plane is nearly within our line sight (i = 89.8°). These conditions
give a unique opportunity to determine the existence, or non-existence,
of planets around this binary by photometric means with a high degree of
certainty. Planetary orbits, if present, will be within the orbital
plane of the binary components, and - due to the small size of the
components - create photometrically detectable transits. The transit of
a Jupitersized planet will cause a brightness drop of 8%, an Earth-sized
planet one 0.08%, which is detectable with subnoise detection
algorithms. The low mass and temperature of the binary components leads
to the expectation that comparable planets will form much closer to the
central stars than in our Solar System, and will have orbits of a few
weeks to months. An observing campaign gathering several months of light
curves of CM Dra will lead to a high probability of detecting a
planetary transit, even when the data are taken non-continuously. The
TEP network observed CM Dra from several 1-m class telescopes in since
1994, and has obtained so far about 500 h of coverage with 16000 CCD
images. This paper presents the data from the first observing campaign
in 1994, covering about 180 h of observations with 3900 measurements.