Hello Astronomers,
Here a new Topic dedicated to the Exoplanets hunting and observations.
Here, my transit observation of the WASP-13b a giant hot planet at 742 light-years from Earth done on april18th, 2021.
You will find some of my latest Exoplanets observations using the transit method in my Telescopius gallery at: Jean_Louis_Naudin's Profile
The equipment that I am currently use for the exoplanets hunting:
- Refractor: Sharpstar 61EDPH II APO Triplet with flatener/reducer(0.82) f: 274mm F4.5
- Main camera: ZWO ASI 294 MC Pro
- Guider camera: Omegon Guide 1200C with Omegon Spotting scope 50mm/200 mm
Mount: Skywatcher AZ-GTI (EQ mode)
Control software: Astroberry with Kstar v 3.5.2 on a Raspberry PI4
Exoplanet dedicated software: HOPS 3.01, AstroImageJ 3.4.0.25
Sincerely,
Jean-Louis
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That’s amazing, Jean-Louis - thanks for sharing. I’m really inspired to have a go myself, it’s awesome to think that I could detect exoplanets from my own back garden!
Gordon
Hello Gordon,
Thanks for your comments. I shall be very glad to share my few amateur experience on exoplanets hunting in this forum. Lets me know if you need some advices and tips about my equipement and the software that I have used to go forward in this way…
Best Regards,
Jean-Louis
Thanks, Jean-Louis. How do you go about choosing a target?
Regards, Gordon
For choosing my Exoplanet target, I am using the Transit Scheduler from Exoworlds Spies at: https://www.exoworldsspies.com/en/scheduler/
You may also use the Transit Scheduler from the ETD database at: http://var2.astro.cz/ETD/
These are very helpful tools for preparing the exoplanet hunting…
Best
Jean-Louis
Here a sample of the ExoClock Scheduler that I have used for the transit of the exoplanet WASP-13b that I have done on April 18th, 2021.
Hi, I was wondering what you are using for post processing of the images if anything. This would be in order to average the images out and “bin” them of sorts. I have tried to use maximDL and use all the images but it just seems like the data points are way too scattered. Any help/suggestions are more than welcome.
Here some explanations of my exoplanets hunting setup: I am using a refractor Sharpstar 61EDPH II APO Triplet with a field flatener reducer (0.82) F= 274mm f/4.5. The main camera is a ZWO ASI 294 MC pro (cooled) and the guiding camera is a Omegon Guide 1200C on a 50mm guidescope. The mount is a Skywatcher AZ-GTI Goto set in EQ mode. The slewing and the astrometry solving is fully done with EKOS installed on a Raspberry PI4 (Astroberry setup) which control all the devices and also do the guiding.
The station is fully automated. After the exoplanet transit capture sequence on the selected target, all the fits files are copied on my PC station with a USB key. The post-processing is fully done with HOPS, the HOlomon Photometric Software developped by Angelos Tsiaras (ExoWorlds Spies: Exoplanet science from your backyard!). I am also using AstroImageJ developped by Dennis M. Conti(https://astrodennis.com/). The HOPS software is more easier to use than AstroImageJ and the process is quite simple. I shall give you some detailled explanations in the next lines of this topic.
Best Regards, Jean-Louis
Here some explanations about the post processing of the fits images with HOPS.
The capturing sequence of the Exoplanet transit (here WASP-13b) has been done with my ZWO ASI 294 MC pro (cooled @ -10°C):
- 300 images (in fits format), Exposure 30 sec, delay 30 sec, gain 100
- 4 bias and 5 darks
The fits files are selected with HOPS.
Then, HOPS do automatically the reduction of the images.
It is possible to remove some bad shoots.
The selection of the main target (WASP-13b) and the selection of the comparison stars are very easy.
The photometry analysis is quickly done by HOPS automatically.
And the result is computed for the fitting process.
Then the final report is created automatically by HOPS. (Export file for ExoClock and ETD database). The final transit curve is finely fitted for the reporting.
I Hope this will help you to go forward…
Best Regards, Jean-Louis
