Using Hot Jupiter HAT-P-7b to Characterize Exoplanets and Their Host Stars

Properties of extrasolar planets and their host stars - a case study of HAT-P-7

Authors:

Van Eylen et al

Abstract:

Data from the Kepler satellite (Q0-Q11) are used to study HAT-P-7. The satellite's data are extremely valuable for asteroseismic studies of stars and for observing planetary transits; in this work we do both. An asteroseismic study of the host star improves the accuracy of the stellar parameters derived by Christensen-Dalsgaard et al. (2010), who followed largely the same procedure but based the analysis on only one month of Kepler data. The stellar information is combined with transit observations, phase variations and occultations to derive planetary parameters. In particular, we confirm the presence of ellipsoidal variations as discovered by Welsh et al. (2010), but revise their magnitude, and we revise the occultation depth (Borucki et al. 2009), which leads to different planetary temperature estimates. All other stellar and planetary parameters are now more accurately determined.