University People Is Nice People

[aesmael]

Decided not to visit the bible study group after all, as I could think of no way to do so without being either sneaky or disruptive. My heart was just not in it today. So here I am, being slightly more productive by studying in the library. I have in front of me a copy of The Astronomical Journal for July this year and I am reading the paper SURVEY FOR TRANSITING EXTRASOLAR PLANETS IN STELLAR SYSTEMS. III. A LIMIT ON THE FRACTION OF STARS WITH PLANETS IN THE OPEN CLUSTER NGC 1245.

Why note this in my journal? It is a convenient way of making information and notes available to myself at home, plus it is possible someone out there may actually be interested. If I could not flatter myself into thinking I had an audience I probably would not be taking notes at all.

If anyone wants an image of the cluster in question, there is a photo and some background on it available here. I see from the abstract some new nomenclature has come into use since I last studied this field: Very Hot Jupiter has been added as a class of planet. There is a helpful bit of definition in the abstract too. A Hot Jupiter has a period of 3.0 to 9.0 days while a Very Hot Jupiter has a period from 1.0 to 3.0 days. I suppose this means no planet has yet been found with a shorter period, or perhaps even that their existence has been determined impossible. Something else to check up on.

Back to the paper. The authors performed a search for transits over 19 nights and found no planets. The essence of their paper is the use of this result to constrain the number of planets likely to be found orbiting stars in this cluster.

I stop here for now. May or may not edit this entry after finishing reading.

Update: Referred to Perryman 2000 for detection methods, http://obspm.fr/encycl/catalog.html for catalogue of planets. At the time of writing the number was 168.

Update 2: The observations described took place October/November 2001. Ah, the speed of science.