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.

 

 
 
 

 

 

Copyright © 2006 - Tonny Vanmunster.