Bibcode
Harrington, Joseph; Jenkins, James; Challener, Ryan C.; Kurtovic, Nicolás T.; Ramirez, Ricardo; Peña Zamudio, José; McIntyre, Kathleen J.; Himes, Michael D.; Rodríguez, Eloy; Anglada-Escudé, Guillem; Dreizler, Stefan; Ofir, Aviv; Ribas, Ignasi; Rojo, Patricio; Kipping, David; Butler, R. Paul; Amado, Pedro J.; Rodríguez-López, Cristina; Kempton, Eliza M.; Palle, Enric; Murgas, Felipe
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #50, id.405.09
Advertised on:
10
2018
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Description
Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun, hosts a habitable-zone
planet (Anglada-Escude' et al. 2016 Nature 536, 437). Several teams have
sought Proxima b's transits using ground-based photometry, and have
reported tentative transit detections (Liu et al. 2018 AJ 155, 12; Blank
et al. 2018 AJ 155, 228; others). Proxima, a modest-sized M-dwarf star,
flares at the 0.5% level (the predicted Proxima b transit depth) 63
times per day, according to our team's prior analysis of optical
photometry from the Microvariability and Oscillations of STars
spacecraft (Davenport et al. 2016 ApJL 829, L31). This dramatically
limits optical precision. However, the effect of flares is much reduced
in the infrared. We observed the system with the Spitzer Space
Telescope's Infrared Array Camera in November 2016. Our first
observation was a 48-hour stare at 4.5 um. It was centered on the
predicted transit and covered the 99% credible region for the transit
time, based on the discovery radial-velocity (RV) data. Despite a
transit-depth precision of 0.01% for a 1 hour transit, we did not
detect the predicted 0.5% transit. There was structure in the light
curve, including some asymmetric transit-like features, that led us to
conduct follow-up observations in May, June, July, and November 2017.
None of these observations contained detections, once we accounted for a
new manifestation of systematics due to spacecraft vibration. Our
improved methods for identifying and partly removing this effect is the
topic of the next presentation. This work is based on observations made
with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a
contract with NASA. We acknowledge support from: NASA Planetary
Atmospheres Program grant NNX12AI69G, NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis
Program grant NNX13AF38G. CATA-Basal/Chile PB06 Conicyt and
Fondecyt/Chile project #1161218 (JSJ). Spanish MINECO programs
AYA2016-79245-C03-03-P (PJA, CRL, and ER) and ESP2017-87676-C05-02-R
(ER).
Related projects
Exoplanets and Astrobiology
The search for life in the universe has been driven by recent discoveries of planets around other stars (known as exoplanets), becoming one of the most active fields in modern astrophysics. The growing number of new exoplanets discovered in recent years and the recent advance on the study of their atmospheres are not only providing new valuable
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