Millimag Precision Photometry of Southern Bright Stars with a 1-m Telescope and a Standard CCD

Abstract

This paper summarizes a three night observing campaign aimed at achieving milli-magnitude precision photometry of bright stars (V < 9.0) with the 1-meter Swope telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. The test targets were the main sequence stars HD205739 and HD135446. The results show that, by placing a concentric diaphragm in front of the aperture of the telescope, it is possible to avoid saturation and to achieve a photometric precision of 0.0008-0.0010 mag per data point with a cadence of less than 4 minutes. It is also possible to reach an overall precision of less that 0.0015 mags for time series of 6 hours or more. The photometric precision of this setup is only limited by scintillation. Scintillation could be reduced, and therefore the photometric precision could be further improved, by using a neutral density filter instead of the aperture stop. Given that the expected median depth of extrasolar planet transits of about 0.01 mags, and their typical duration of several hours, the results of this paper show that 1-m telescopes equipped with standard CCDs can be used to detect planet transits as shallow as 0.002 mags around bright stars.