XO Telescope

The XO Telescope is an astronomical telescope located on the 3,054 m (10,000 foot) summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii. It consists of two 200-millimeter telephoto camera lenses, and resembles binoculars in shape. It is used by the XO Project to detect extrasolar planets using the transit method. It is similar to the TrES survey telescope. The construction of the one-of-a-kind telescope cost $60,000 for the hardware, and much more than that for the associated software.[1]

Planets discovered

The XO telescope has discovered six objects so far, five are hot Jupiter planets and one, XO-3b, may be a brown dwarf. All were discovered using the transit method.

Light green rows indicate that the planet orbits one of the stars in a binary star system.

Star	Constellation	Right ascension	Declination	App. mag.	Distance (ly)	Spectral type	Planet	Mass (MJ)	Radius (RJ)	Orbital period (d)	Semimajor axis (AU)	Orbital eccentricity	Inclination (°)	Discovery year
XO-1[2]	Corona Borealis	16^h 02^m 12^s	+28° 10′ 11″	11.319	600	G1V	XO-1b	0.9	1.3	3.941534	0.0488	0	87.7	2006
XO-2N[3]	Lynx	07^h 48^m 07^s	+50° 13′ 33″	11.25	486	K0V	XO-2Nb	0.57	0.973	2.615838	0.0369	0	88.58	2007
XO-3[4]	Camelopardalis	04^h 21^m 53^s	+57° 49′ 01″	9.91	850	F5V	XO-3b	11.79	1.217	3.1915239	0.0454	0.26	84.2	2007
XO-4[5]	Lynx	07^h 21^m 33.1657^s	+58° 16′ 05.005″	10.78	956	F5V	XO-4b	1.72	1.34	4.12502	0.0555	0.0024	88.7	2008
XO-5[6]	Lynx	07^h 46^m 51.959^s	+39° 05′ 40.47″	12.1	881	G8V	XO-5b	1.15	1.15	4.187732	0.0508	0.0029	86.8	2008
XO-6[7]					760	F5V	XO-6b	4.4	2.07	3.76	0.082	0	86.0	2016

See also

• List of extrasolar planets

A subset of XO light curves are available at the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

Other Ground Transit Surveys

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) at Paranal Observatory.[8]

• Next-Generation Transit Survey
• Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey or TrES
• HATNet Project or HAT
• Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope or KELT
• SuperWASP or WASP

References

1. McCullough, P. R.; et al. (2005). "The XO Project: Searching for Transiting Extrasolar Planet Candidates". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 117 (834): 783–795. arXiv:astro-ph/0505560. Bibcode:2005PASP..117..783M. doi:10.1086/432024.
2. McCullough, P. R.; et al. (2006). "A Transiting Planet of a Sun-like Star". The Astrophysical Journal. 648 (2): 1228–1238. arXiv:astro-ph/0605414. Bibcode:2006ApJ...648.1228M. doi:10.1086/505651.
3. Burke, Christopher J.; et al. (2007). "XO-2b: Transiting Hot Jupiter in a Metal-rich Common Proper Motion Binary". The Astrophysical Journal. 671 (2): 2115–2128. arXiv:0705.0003. Bibcode:2007ApJ...671.2115B. doi:10.1086/523087.
4. Johns-Krull, Christopher M.; et al. (2008). "XO-3b: A Massive Planet in an Eccentric Orbit Transiting an F5V Star". The Astrophysical Journal. 677 (1): 657–670. arXiv:0712.4283. Bibcode:2008ApJ...677..657J. doi:10.1086/528950.
5. McCullough, P. R.; et al. (2008). "XO-4b: An Extrasolar Planet Transiting an F5V Star". arXiv:0805.2921 [astro-ph].
6. Burke, Christopher J.; et al. (2008). "XO-5b: A Transiting Jupiter-sized Planet with a 4 day Period". The Astrophysical Journal. 686 (2): 1331–1340. arXiv:0805.2399. Bibcode:2008ApJ...686.1331B. doi:10.1086/591497.
7. Crouzet, N.; et al. (2017). "Discovery of XO-6b: A Hot Jupiter Transiting a Fast Rotating F5 Star on an Oblique Orbit". The Astronomical Journal. 153 (3). 94. arXiv:1612.02776. Bibcode:2017AJ....153...94C. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/153/3/94.
8. "New Exoplanet-hunting Telescopes on Paranal". www.eso.org. European Southern Observatory. Retrieved 14 January 2015.

External links

• The XO Project website
• Astronomers Catch Planet By Unusual Means (SpaceDaily) May 19, 2006