Current Challenges Facing Planet Transit Surveys

Abstract

The initial task that confronted extrasolar-planet transit surveys was to monitor enough stars with sufficient photometric precision and complete phase coverage. Numerous searches have been pursued over the last few years. Among these projects are shallow, intermediate, and deep surveys of the Galactic plane, and monitoring of open clusters, and a globular cluster. These projects have all defeated the initial technical challenge, but a new obstacle has risen in its place: Single-color photometric time series are not sufficient to identify uniquely transiting planet systems, as eclipsing binary stars can mimic the signal. Multicolor photometric time series and multi-epoch spectroscopic monitoring are required to cull the list of candidates prior to high-precision radial velocity monitoring. I also discuss the prospects for detecting another transiting system among the planets found by the radial-velocity method, as well as review the recent announcement of OGLE-TR-56b, the first extrasolar planet detected by the transit method.