Proposal #23

Hello,

My name is Talia Marin and I am a physics major at Bridgewater State University. I am taking an astrophysics class with Dr. Martina Arndt and she has asked us to do a project as part of the course. I have chosen to work on exoplanets, specifically WASP-52b. The goal for this project is to learn to do photometry with real data, create a light curve of an exoplanet and if the results are good enough, share them on the Czech Astronomical Society’s Exoplanet Transit Database (http://var2.astro.cz/ETD/).

I have chosen a well-known exoplanet rather than a candidate so that I can compare our data with known values. WASP-52b is an ideal object because of its large transit depth (.029 mags) and short orbit (1.7 days) as well as its visibility from our location at BSU in case we would like to compare data collected here with data we obtain from a remote facility.

I am writing to ask if there might be time available at the Sonoita, AZ observatory to observe one or two transits of WASP-52b. Below I have several predicted transit dates in the hopes that at least one or two will be possible between weather and telescope availability. The data would need to be collected beginning about 10 minutes before the predicted transit times (given below)and continue until 10 minutes after. (I defer to your expertise on exposure time and choice of filter).

Thank you for your consideration and please let me know if there is any more information I can provide you with.

Talia Martin
Bridgewater State University
T1martin@student.bridgew.edu

Tmid (HJD) BEGIN* (UT) END* (UT)
2456589.831 24.10 7:02 24.10 8:51
2456591.581 26.10 1:02 26.10 2:50
2456596.830 31.10 7:01 31.10 8:50
2456598.580 02.11 1:01 02.11 2:49
2456603.829 07.11 7:00 07.11 8:48
2456605.579 09.11 0:59 09.11 2:48
2456612.578 16.11 0:58 16.11 2:47
2456619.577 23.11 0:57 23.11 2:45
2456626.577 30.11 0:56 30.11 2:44

*Begin is the predicted beginning of the transit and End is the predicted end of the transit