Austrian Early Career Conference 2024

Contribution:
Poster

Authors:
Laura Schöller; Arno Riffeser; Luis Thomas; Juliana Ehrhardt

Affiliations:
University Observatory, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München

Title:
Planet Vetting of TESS data

Abstract:
The cornerstones of our current understanding of exoplanets undoubtedly rests on the groundbreaking missions of TESS and Kepler, which have discovered over 5000 exoplanet candidates. With the help of automated pipelines, the data is reduced and the lightcurves are inspected for transit signals. Despite attempts of filtering out conspicuous False Positive candidates such as eclipsing binaries, blended systems, or nearby transiting events, a significant number of them get reported as potential planets. The following confirmation process traditionally involves highly expensive ground-based photometric and spetroscopic observations. To be as efficient as possible with the limited observing resources, several techniques are available to validate transit signals before starting further surveillance. The goal is to create a secondary analysis "pipeline", which first employs the available methods and later examines the phasefolded lightcurve using a Python tool called Triceratops. This approach aims to identify specific False Positives, providing a nuanced perspective and guiding subsequent follow-up observations.