Open AccessFast identification of transits from light‐curves
Author(s) -
Protopapas Pavlos,
Jimenez Raul,
Alcock Charles
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09305.x
Subject(s) - physics , light curve , spitzer space telescope , transit (satellite) , james webb space telescope , exoplanet , planet , large synoptic survey telescope , kepler , astronomy , telescope , stars , algorithm , computer science , public transport , political science , law
We present an algorithm that allows fast and efficient detection of transits, including planetary transits, from light‐curves. The method is based on building an ensemble of fiducial models and compressing the data using the moped compression algorithm. We describe the method and demonstrate its efficiency by finding planet‐like transits in simulated Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan‐STARRS) light‐curves. We show that our method is independent of the size of the search space of transit parameters. In large sets of light‐curves, we achieve speed‐up factors of the order of 10 3 times over an optimized adaptive search in the χ 2 space. We discuss how the algorithm can be used in forthcoming large surveys like Pan‐STARRS and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), and how it may be optimized for future space missions like Kepler and COROT where most of the processing must be done on board.