Dissertation

Don't Blink: Detecting transiting exoplanets with MASCARA

This thesis describes the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA (MASCARA), which consists of two small robotic telescope designed to detect exoplanets around the brightest stars in the sky.

Author: Talens, G.J.J.
Date: 19 December 2018
Links: Thesis in Leiden Repository

This thesis describes the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA (MASCARA), which consists of two small robotic telescope designed to detect exoplanets around the brightest stars in the sky. These telescopes search for exoplanets by continuously taking images of the sky and measuring the brightness of stars in these images, searching for the characteristic dimming that occurs when a planet passes in front of the star, blocking some of the starlight. An introduction to exoplanets is provided in chapter 1. The optical and mechanical design of the MASCARA telescopes, as well as the image processing algorithms, are described in chapter 2. The primary and secondary calibration methods used to remove systematic effects from the brightness measurements, as well as the transit search algorithm used, are described in chapter 3. The first planets discovered by MASCARA, two hot Jupiters orbiting the stars HD 201585 and HD 185603, are described in chapters 4 and 5.