The XO Project: Searching for Transiting Extra-solar Planet Candidates

Abstract

The XO project's first objective is to find hot Jupiters transiting bright stars, i.e. V < 12, by precision differential photometry. Two XO cameras have been operating since September 2003 on the 10,000-foot Haleakala summit on Maui. Each XO camera consists of a 200-mm f/1.8 lens coupled to a 1024x1024 pixel, thinned CCD operated by drift scanning. In its first year of routine operation, XO has observed 6.6% of the sky, within six 7 deg-wide strips scanned from 0 deg to +63 deg of declination and centered at RA=0, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 hours. Autonomously operating, XO records 1 billion pixels per clear night, calibrates them photometrically and astrometrically, performs aperture photometry, archives the pixel data and transmits the photometric data to STScI for further analysis. From the first year of operation, the resulting database consists of photometry of 100,000 stars at more than 1000 epochs per star with differential photometric precision better than 1% per epoch. Analysis of the light curves of those stars produces transiting-planet candidates requiring detailed follow up, described elsewhere, culminating in spectroscopy to measure radial-velocity variation in order to differentiate genuine planets from the more numerous impostors, primarily eclipsing binary and multiple stars.