The Exoplanet Orbit Database

Author:

Han, Eunkyu

Area of Honors:

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Degree:

Bachelor of Science

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Jason Thomas Wright, Thesis Supervisor
William Nielsen Brandt, Thesis Honors Advisor

Keywords:

exoplanet
exoplanets.org
EOD

Abstract:

I report a series of updates and enhancements on the Exoplanet Orbit Database (EOD), which contains peer-reviewed orbital and transit parameters of exoplanets and stellar parameters of their host stars. Since December 2010, the EOD expanded from 427 planets to 640 planets, as of September 2012. The EOD can be explored through the Exoplanet Data Explorer Plotter and Table, available at http://exoplanets.org. I have used a program called boottran which uses radial velocity data to calculate transit times and secondary eclipse times with robust bootstrapped uncertainties, which I have made publicly available at exoplanets.org. boottran calculates robust predicted transit dates with uncertainties for the next 10 years for long period planets not known to transit. I used data taken from published peer-reviewed papers and new data from the California Planet Survey for our ephmerides and for radial velocity plots on exoplanets.org. Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS) uses these ephemerides to plan photometric observations of the stars. To improve the EOD, I have added fields for surface gravity, transit duration (T14), impact parameter (b) and their uncertainties. I also have added transit parameters including secondary eclipse depth at multiple bands and Rossiter-McLaughlin spin-orbit misalignment measurements.