2018/04/16 by Artem Burdanov, Paul Benni, Eugene Sokov +19 · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.EP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1538-3873/aabde2
We report the discovery of the transiting hot Jupiter KPS-1b. This exoplanet orbits a V=13.0 K1-type main-sequence star every 1.7 days, has a mass of 1.090-0.087+0.086 MJup and a radius of 1.03-0.12+0.13 RJup. The discovery was made by the prototype Kourovka Planet Search (KPS) project, which used wide-field CCD data gathered by an amateur astronomer using readily available and relatively affordable equipment. Here we describe the equipment and observing technique used for the discovery of KPS-1b, its characterization with spectroscopic observations by the SOPHIE spectrograph and with high-precision photometry obtained with 1-m class telescopes. We also outline the KPS project evolution into the Galactic Plane eXoplanet survey (GPX). The discovery of KPS-1b represents a new major step of the contribution of amateur astronomers to the burgeoning field of exoplanetology.