Diffuser-assisted Infrared Transit Photometry for Four Dynamically Interacting Kepler Systems

Authors

• Shreyas Vissapragada, California Institute of Technology
• Daniel Jontof-Hutter, University of the PacificFollow
• Avi Shporer, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
• Heather A. Knutson, California Institute of Technology
• Leo Liu, Pennsylvania State University
• Daniel Thorngren, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Eve J. Lee, California Institute of Technology
• Yayaati Chachan, California Institute of Technology
• Dimitri Mawet, California Institute of Technology
• Maxwell A. Millar-Blanchaer, California Institute of Technology
• Ricky Nilsson, California Institute of Technology
• Samaporn Tinyanont, California Institute of Technology
• Gautam Vasisht, California Institute of Technology
• Jason T. Wright, Pennsylvania State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Astronomical Journal

Department

Physics

ISSN

15383881

Volume

159

Issue

3

DOI

10.3847/1538-3881/ab65c8

First Page

1

Last Page

26

Publication Date

2-13-2020

Abstract

We present ground-based infrared transit observations for four dynamically interacting Kepler planets, including Kepler-29b, Kepler-36c, KOI-1783.01, and Kepler-177c, obtained using the Wide-field Infrared Camera on the Hale 200 inch telescope at Palomar Observatory. By utilizing an engineered diffuser and custom guiding software, we mitigate time-correlated telluric and instrumental noise sources in these observations. We achieve an infrared photometric precision comparable to or better than that of space-based observatories such as the Spitzer Space Telescope, and detect transits with greater than 3σ significance for all planets. For Kepler-177c (J = 13.9), our measurement uncertainties are only 1.2 times the photon noise limit and 1.9 times better than the predicted photometric precision for Spitzer IRAC photometry of this same target. We find that a single transit observation obtained 4-5 yr after the end of the original Kepler mission can reduce dynamical mass uncertainties by as much as a factor of 3 for these systems. Additionally, we combine our new observations of KOI-1783.01 with information from the literature to confirm the planetary nature of this system. We discuss the implications of our new mass and radius constraints in the context of known exoplanets with low incident fluxes, and we note that Kepler-177c may be a more massive analog to the currently known super-puffs given its core mass (3.8 ±0.9M⊕) and large gas-to-core ratio (2.8 ± 0.7). Our demonstrated infrared photometric performance opens up new avenues for ground-based observations of transiting exoplanets previously thought to be restricted to space-based investigation.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Vissapragada, Shreyas; Jontof-Hutter, Daniel; Shporer, Avi; Knutson, Heather A.; Liu, Leo; Thorngren, Daniel; Lee, Eve J.; Chachan, Yayaati; Mawet, Dimitri; Millar-Blanchaer, Maxwell A.; Nilsson, Ricky; Tinyanont, Samaporn; Vasisht, Gautam; and Wright, Jason T., "Diffuser-assisted Infrared Transit Photometry for Four Dynamically Interacting Kepler Systems" (2020). Pacific Faculty Work. 252.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/all-faculty/252