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Description
Meter-sized ground-based telescopes are frequently used today for the follow-up of extrasolar planet candidates. While the transit signal of a Jupiter-sized object can typically be detected to a high level of confidence with small telescope apertures as well, the shallow transit dips of planets with the size of Neptune and smaller are more challenging to reveal. We employ new observational data to illustrate the photometric follow-up capabilities of meter-sized telescopes for shallow exoplanet transits. We describe in detail the capability of distinguishing the photometric signal of an exoplanet transit from an underlying trend in the light curve. The transit depths of the six targets we observed, Kepler-94b, Kepler-63b, K2-100b, K2-138b, K2-138c, and K2-138e, range from 3.9ppt down to 0.3ppt. For five targets of this sample, we provide the first ground-based photometric follow-up. The timing of three targets is precisely known from previous observations, and the timing of the other three targets is uncertain and we aim to constrain it. We detect or rule out the transit features significantly in single observations for the targets that show transits of 1.3ppt or deeper. The shallower transit depths of two targets of 0.6 and 0.8ppt were detected tentatively in single light curves, and were detected significantly by repeated observations. Only for the target of the shallowest transit depth of 0.3ppt were we unable to draw a significant conclusion despite combining five individual light curves. An injection-recovery test on our real data shows that we detect transits of 1.3ppt depth significantly in single light curves if the transit is fully covered, including out-of-transit data toward both sides, in some cases down to 0.7ppt depth. For Kepler-94b, Kepler-63b, and K2-100b, we were able to verify the ephemeris. In the case of K2-138c with a 0.6ppt deep transit, we were able to refine it, and in the case of K2-138e, we ruled out the transit in the time interval of more than +/-1.5{sigma} of its current literature ephemeris.
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