Proposal #240

Proposal form: Provide for member’s stated educational objectives that can be appropriately supported by the BSM Section resources.

Object: Exoplanet transit in front of its star

-Star: HD80606 (Ursa Major) RA (J2000):9h22min37.69s, D (J2000): 50°36’13.6”
SIMBAD information about magnitude with filters B,V,G,J,H,K, with errors in square brackets:
B 9.78 [0.03], V 9.00 [0.02], G 8.8201 [0.0002], J 7.702 [0.030], H 7.400 [0.034], K 7.316 [0.020]
-Exoplanet: HD80606b

Requested telescopes: BSM TX, BSM NM, BSM NH2

Filters: Red filter, with 30 seconds of exposure time per image (total of 150 images)

Time interval: night: December 7 – December 8, from 6h UTC to 12h UTC (Local: from 00:00 to 06:00)

Member Name: IPSAVEGA

There are 2 objectives for this observation: the main objective is to support an upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observation to study its atmosphere in detail (this campaign was launched by eVscope manufacturer Unistellar, which is a partner of AAVSO). This study is particularly interesting because this exoplanet has extreme weather conditions (for instance, the temperature can vary by hundreds of degrees in just a few hours) because of the eccentricity of its orbit around its star, which is one of the largest known, comparable to Halley comet.
Moreover, because of this eccentricity, the transit of HD80606b around its star occurs every 111 days, so this is a rare opportunity to get a new timing measurement to help guide the scheduling of the JWST observation.
The second objective is to train and learn to students from IPSAVega (IPSAVega is an astronomical student association whose objective is to teach astronomy to its members through several scientific missions) to analyze data (collected thanks to the transit method) to confirm the existence of an exoplanet. So, this observation could be important educationally, and also scientifically because these observations could lead to a publication in a scientific journal written by the members of the association.
The weather is bad for observing here in France and we can’t use our eVscope to collect data. Besides, Unistellar is a partner of AAVSO for Exoplanet science. that’s why we are requesting telescope time. Anica Lekic, PhD Physics teacher, supervises the project. We have previously worked with David Cowall, Kenneth Menzies and George Silvis from AAVSO, who helped us for an observation mission of the exoplanet Wasp 148b.
The project would start as soon as the data is received.