Co-discovery
of the transiting exoplanet XO-2b
In May 2006, the XO consortium announced its first
discovery of a transiting exoplanet, named XO-1b.
The discovery attracted a lot of attention, a/o due
to the important role played by 4 amateur
astronomers - including myself - in the months
preceding the discovery announcement. The full story
is here.
The XO team meanwhile has continued its photometric wide-field search for
Jovian planets transiting bright stars, assisted by
the XO Extended Team of amateur astronomers (that
has further grown in number as well). In May 2007,
the second discovery by XO was announced : XO-2b.
And again, the XO Extended Team has been monitoring
the object intensively in the months before the
discovery was made public. At that time, the
object was given the codename 120p52.0436,
and below are some of my observations of this object.
Unfiltered observations of
XO-2,
obtained at CBA Belgium Observatory on 2007, March
11/12,
and Apr 06/07,
using a 0.35-m f/6.3 telescope and ST-7XME CCD
camera.
Each dot in the light curve is an average of 4 observations. Error bars depict the standard
deviation.
XO-2b properties
XO-2 is an early K dwarf star,
also known as GSC 03413-00005. It's an 11-th
magnitude star at RA = 07h48m06.47s and Decl = +50°13'33.0"
(J2000.0). It hosts a Rp=0.973+0.03/-0.008 Rjup,
Mp=0.57+/-0.06 Mjup transiting extrasolar planet,
XO-2b, with an orbital period of 2.615838+/-0.000008
days.
