|
Description
The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey is a project that aims to detect transits of intermediate-long period planets by refining orbital parameters of the known radial velocity planets using additional data from ground-based telescopes, calculating a revised transit ephemeris for the planet, then monitoring the planet host star during the predicted transit window. Here we present the results from three systems that had high probabilities of transiting planets: HD9446b and c, HD43691b, and HD179079b. We provide new radial velocity (RV) measurements that are then used to improve the orbital solution for the known planets. We search the RV data for indications of additional planets in orbit and find that HD9446 shows a strong linear trend of 4.8{sigma}. Using the newly refined planet orbital solutions, which include a new best-fit solution for the orbital period of HD9446c, and an improved transit ephemerides, we found no evidence of transiting planets in the photometry for each system. Transits of HD9446b can be ruled out completely and transits HD9446c and HD43691b can be ruled out for impact parameters up to b=0.5778 and b=0.898, respectively, due to gaps in the photometry. A transit of HD179079b cannot be ruled out, however, due to the relatively small size of this planet compared to the large star and thus low signal to noise. We determine properties of the three host stars through spectroscopic analysis and find through photometric analysis that HD9446 exhibits periodic variability.
|
