PASTIS: Planetary Analysis and Small Transit Investigation Software

ALMENARA, J. M.; DÍAZ, R. F.; SANTERNE, A.; MOUTOU, C.

Niza

Jornada; Semaine de l'Astrophysique Française 2012; 2012

Société Française d'Astronomie & d'Astrophysique (SF2A)

The Transit search method to detect exoplanets is contaminated by falsepositives, produced by one of several kinds of configurations involvingeclipsing binaries. Follow-up observations are used to reveal the truenature of the candidates. These observational efforts run intodifficulties due, on one hand, to the faintness of the typical targets(specially for CoRoT and Kepler candidates), and on the other, due tothe small-amplitude signals produced by small-mass planets. As aconsequence many small planet candidates remain unsolved. We aredeveloping a tool, called PASTIS, to solve these cases using all theavailable data including the light curve, photometry, radial velocitydata, etc. We use bayesian methods to fit the data with different modelsand to compare and quantify the relative probability of differentscenarios. In this way we plan to validate most of the currentlyunsolved cases and to increase the number of confirmed small planets.