Spitzer IRAC Sparsely Sampled Phase Curve of the Exoplanet WASP-14b

• Main Authors: Krick, J. E, Ingalls, J, Carey, S, von Braun, K, Kane, S. R, Ciardi, D, Plavchan, P, Wong, I, Lowrance, P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 10-03-2016
• Subjects: Physics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1603.03383

Motivated by a high Spitzer IRAC oversubscription rate, we present a new
technique of randomly and sparsely sampling phase curves of hot Jupiters.
Snapshot phase curves are enabled by technical advances in precision pointing
as well as careful characterization of a portion of the central pixel on the
array. This method allows for observations which are a factor of roughly two
more efficient than full phase curve observations, and are furthermore easier
to insert into the Spitzer observing schedule. We present our pilot study from
this program using the exoplanet WASP-14b. Data of this system were taken both
as a sparsely sampled phase curve as well as a staring mode phase curve. Both
datasets as well as snapshot style observations of a calibration star are used
to validate this technique. By fitting our WASP-14b phase snapshot dataset, we
successfully recover physical parameters for the transit and eclipse depths as
well as amplitude and maximum and minimum of the phase curve shape of this
slightly eccentric hot Jupiter. We place a limit on the potential phase to
phase variation of these parameters since our data are taken over many phases
over the course of a year. We see no evidence for eclipse depth variations
compared to other published WASP-14b eclipse depths over a 3.5 year baseline.