J/AJ/167/20 Breakthrough listen search for intelligent life (Zuckerman+, 2024)
The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Detection and
Characterization of Anomalous Transits in Kepler Lightcurves.
Zuckerman A., Davenport J.R.A., Croft S., Siemion A., de Pater I.
<Astron. J., 167, 20 (2024)>
=2024AJ....167...20Z 2024AJ....167...20Z
ADC_Keywords: Exoplanets; Positional data
Keywords: Exoplanet astronomy ; Exoplanet catalogs ; Exoplanet detection
methods ; Transit photometry ; Transits ; Search for
extraterrestrial intelligence ; Light curves
Abstract:
Never before has the detection and characterization of exoplanets via
transit photometry been as promising and feasible as it is now, due to
the increasing breadth and sensitivity of time domain optical surveys.
Past works have made use of phase-folded stellar lightcurves in order
to study the properties of exoplanet transits because this provides
the highest signal that a transit is present at a given period and
ephemeris. Characterizing transits on an individual, rather than
phase-folded, basis is much more challenging due to the often low
signal-to-noise ratio of lightcurves, missing data, and low sampling
rates. However, by phase folding a lightcurve we implicitly assume
that all transits have the same expected properties, and lose all
information about the nature and variability of the transits. We miss
the natural variability in transit shapes, or even the deliberate or
inadvertent modification of transit signals by an extraterrestrial
civilization (for example, via laser emission or orbiting
megastructures). In this work, we develop an algorithm to search
stellar lightcurves for individual anomalous (in timing or depth)
transits, and we report the results of that search for 218 confirmed
transiting exoplanet systems from Kepler.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 94 228 System information summary
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See also:
J/ApJS/235/38 : Kepler planetary cand. VIII. DR25 reliability (Thompson+, 2018)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 14 A14 --- Name System Name
16- 28 A13 --- Sib Sibling planets
30- 32 I3 --- Nt [4/982]? Number of transits
34- 38 F5.3 --- Rp/Rs [0.01/1.18]? Ratio, planet radius to star
radius
40- 45 F6.2 au a [2.58/219]? Semi-major axis
47- 51 F5.2 deg i [81/93.7]? Inclination
53- 53 I1 --- e [0/0]? Eccentricity, set to zero
55- 60 F6.1 deg omega [-163/305]? Argument of periastron
62- 68 F7.5 --- depth [0.0002/0.04]? Relative depth
70- 76 F7.5 d Recdepth [5e-05/0.04]? depth Recovery RMS
78- 82 F5.3 --- RevTTV [0.03/1]? TTV recovery RMS
84- 88 A5 --- Flag-fit Failed fitting, TRUE/FALSE
90- 94 A5 --- Flag-inject Failed injection, TRUE/FALSE
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Coralie Fix [CDS], 19-Apr-2024