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Science 7 August 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5941, p. 709
DOI: 10.1126/science.1178312
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Brevia

Kepler’s Optical Phase Curve of the Exoplanet HAT-P-7b

W. J. Borucki,1,* D. Koch,1 J. Jenkins,2 D. Sasselov,3 R. Gilliland,4 N. Batalha,5 D. W. Latham,3 D. Caldwell,2 G. Basri,6 T. Brown,7 J. Christensen-Dalsgaard,8 W. D. Cochran,9 E. DeVore,2 E. Dunham,10 A. K. Dupree,3 T. Gautier,11 J. Geary,3 A. Gould,12 S. Howell,13 H. Kjeldsen,8 J. Lissauer,1 G. Marcy,6 S. Meibom,3 D. Morrison,1 J. Tarter2

Ten days of photometric data were obtained during the commissioning phase of the Kepler mission, including data for the previously known giant transiting exoplanet HAT-P-7b. The data for HAT-P-7b show a smooth rise and fall of light from the planet as it orbits its star, punctuated by a drop of 130 ± 11 parts per million in flux when the planet passes behind its star. We interpret this as the phase variation of the dayside thermal emission plus reflected light from the planet as it orbits its star and is occulted. The depth of the occultation is similar in photometric precision to the detection of a transiting Earth-size planet for which the mission was designed.

1 NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
2 SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
4 Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
5 San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA.
6 University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
7 Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Goleta, CA 93117,USA.
8 Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
9 University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
10 Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA.
11 Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
12 Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
13 National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: william.j.borucki{at}nasa.gov

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Kepler Planet-Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results.
W. J. Borucki, D. Koch, G. Basri, N. Batalha, T. Brown, D. Caldwell, J. Caldwell, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, W. D. Cochran, E. DeVore, et al. (2010)
Science 327, 977-980
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