Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: alfa015 on 12/10/2018 21:18:21

Title: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: alfa015 on 12/10/2018 21:18:21

Hi guys,

I detected my first exoplanet (hd 189733 b) and made a video about it showing step by step how I did it. I thought it could be useful for the people interested in the topic or already starting with transit photometry.

The star has an apparent magnitude of 7.7 and the exoplanet produces a drop of 2.8% during almost 2 hours.

I used a tele-photo lens (the Pentacon 135 mm f 2.8 ), a CMOS camera (ZWO ASI 120 MM) and an equatorial mount (Skywatcher EQ3-2)

I also have a dual-axis motor drive, but a simple one that only controls the right ascension would be enough.

I bought most of the items second-hand from Ebay and I spent around 300 euros.

To set up the tele-photo lens and the camera I have a couple of guide rings and in order to focus the tele-photo lens, I have to separate it 33 mm from the camera by using for example 2 M42 extension rings, one of them 28 mm long and the other one 5 mm.

Now, the steps to detect the exoplanet are the following:

                                      1. To find out when is the exoplanet going to transit the star with the Exoplanet Transit
                                          Database.

                                      2. With a program called SharpCap, take for example 5-second exposures with a gain of 1
                                          for 3 hours.

                                      3. Once the transit has finished, with a program called ‘AstroImageJ’ open all the images,
                                          select the target star and for example a couple of reference stars, and perform multi-
                                          aperture photometry to detect the light curve.

I think it is better explained with a video: <spam link to personal youtube channel removed>

Title: Re: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: chris on 12/10/2018 22:05:08

Nice video and a nice project!

Title: Re: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: alfa015 on 20/10/2018 13:24:25

Thanks a lot for your kind words! I really appreciate them :)

Title: Re: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: alfa015 on 21/10/2018 15:44:26

Anybody has tried it? :)

Title: Re: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: yor_on on 23/10/2018 05:36:30

Pretty cool.
Do you mean that you confirmed the planets existence or that you found something nobody knew about before?
I guess that no matter what, you still can use the same procedure to test other stars, right?

Definitely cool
=

And a chick magnet possibly :)

Title: Re: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: alfa015 on 27/10/2018 15:31:30

Thanks!

Yes, I just detected the exoplanet, I didn't discover it.

But, as you said, it is useful to confirm potential exoplanets.

Title: Re: Can you detect your own exoplanets?
Post by: Kryptid on 27/10/2018 19:19:28

This is pretty cool. Would I be right in assuming that most (or even all) stars visible to the naked eye have already been searched for transiting exoplanets by now using much more powerful telescopes? That amounts to a little over 9,000 stars. That sounds like a lot, but we've already confirmed over 3,000 exoplanets in total.