by Anthony Ayiomamitis
The light curve for XO-1b in Corona Borealis depicted above is one of the latest transitting exoplanets, having being discovered in 2006, and is particularly unique since it represents a clear collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers where the research team led by Peter McCullough (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA) identify a number of potential candidates using widefield imaging and amateurs were asked to pursue the photometry thereafter of promising candidates. XO-1b is characterized with a mass and radius 0.90 and 1.184 that of Jupiter, respectively, and an orbital period of only 95 hours. XO-1b requires 179.5 minutes to transit its parent star at a depth of 17 mmag (1.70%). The parent star, GSC 2041:1657, is of spectral type G1V and is estimated to have a mass of 1.00 solar masses, a radius equivalent to 0.928 solar radii and a temperature of 5,750° K. The C- and K-stars used for the purposes of the differential photometry measurements depicted above were GSC 2041:1282 (mag 11.2) and GSC 2041:186 (mag 11.4), respectively.
Location: Athens, Greece (38.2997° N, 23.7430° E)
Date: Jun 04-05, 2009 22:55:00 - 04:00:28 UT+3
Equipment: AP 160 f/7.5 Starfire EDF, AP 1200GTO GEM, SBIG ST-10XME, SBIG CFW-10, Baader IR Pass Filter
Integrations: InfraRed: 224 x 75 sec, Dark: 15 x 75 sec, Flat: ~16,000 ADU, Binning: 2x2
Further details regarding XO-1 and XO-1b including the paper published by the discovery team led by Peter McCullough et al, see http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Photometry-XO-1-20090604.htm .