XO Telescope

The XO Telescope is a telescope located on the 3,054 m summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii, formed by a pair of 200 mm telephoto lenses. It is used to detect extrasolar planets using the transit method. It is similar to the TrES survey telescope. The construction of the one-of-a-kind telescope cost $60,000 for the hardware, and much more than that for the associated software.[1]

Contents

Planets discovered

The XO telescope has discovered five objects so far, four are hot Jupiter planets and one, XO-3b, is probably a brown dwarf. All were discovered using the transit method.

Star Constellation Right
ascension		 Declination App.
mag.		 Distance (ly) Spectral
type		 Planet Mass
(MJ)		 Radius
(RJ)		 Orbital
period
(d)		 Semimajor
axis
(AU)		 Orbital
eccentricity		 Inclination
(°)		 Discovery
year
XO-1 Corona Borealis 16h 02m 12s +28° 10′ 11″ 11.319 600 G1V XO-1b 0.9 1.3 3.941534 0.0488 0 87.7 2006
XO-2 Lynx 07h 48m 07s +50° 13′ 33″ 11.25 486 K0V XO-2b 0.57 0.973 2.615838 0.0369 0 88.58 2007
XO-3 Camelopardalis 04h 21m 53s +57° 49′ 01″ 9.91 850 F5V XO-3b 11.79 1.217 3.1915239 0.0454 0.26 84.2 2007
XO-4 Lynx 07h 21m 33.1657s +58° 16′ 05.005″ 10.78 956 F5V XO-4b 1.72 1.34 4.12502 0.0555 0.0024 88.7 2008
XO-5 Lynx 07h 46m 51.959s +39° 05′ 40.47″ 12.1 881 G8V XO-5b 1.15 1.15 4.187732 0.0508 0.0029 86.8 2008

See also

A subset of XO light curves are available at the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database.

Other Ground Transit Surveys

References

  1. ^ McCullough et al.; Stys, J. E.; Valenti, J. A.; Fleming, S. W.; Janes, K. A.; Heasley, J. N. (2005). "The XO Project: Searching for Transiting Extrasolar Planet Candidates". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 117 (834): 783–795. arXiv:astro-ph/0505560. Bibcode 2005PASP..117..783M. doi:10.1086/432024. 

External links