wide-field telescopes, photometry, and planets

[Tass Mailing List <tass@mail.alembic.net>]

Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:00:19 -0400
From: Michael Richmond <richmond@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>
To: tass@tass-survey.org
Cc: mwrsps@rit.edu
Subject: wide-field telescopes, photometry, and planets


  There is an interesting paper on astro-ph this week:

       http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0610603

It describes the efforts of the TrES team as they investigate
six good-looking candidates for planetary transits.  Their
small telescopes are not dissimilar to TASS, but their mode
of operation is very different: they stare repeatedly at
one field rather than covering large areas of the sky.

  Some of the problems with which we've struggled do affect
them as well (as you'll see if you look at Figure 7).

  The paper is a good read: I enjoy finding out what can
go wrong in a difficult project, instead of reading only
about the successes.  It's only 6 pages long, and well
worth a scan.

  Good luck to the TrES team!

                              Michael Richmond