First Results from the Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS)

Abstract

Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes due to the bias inherent in the geometric transit probability. Through the refinement of planetary orbital parameters, and hence reducing the size of transit windows, long-period planets become feasible targets for photometric follow-up. Here we describe the TERMS project which is monitoring these host stars at predicted transit times.

2 pages, 2 figures, to be published in ASP Conf. Proceedings: "Pathways Towards Habitable Planets" 2009, Barcelona, Spain (eds.: D. Gelino, V. Coude du Foresto, I. Ribas)