MASCARA News and Results - Finding transiting planets around early-type stars

http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.4116

Quote :

The Multi-site All-sky CAmeRA MASCARA is an instrument concept consisting of several stations across the globe, with each station containing a battery of low-cost cameras to monitor the near-entire sky at each location. Once all stations have been installed, MASCARA will be able to provide a nearly 24-hr coverage of the complete dark sky, down to magnitude 8, at sub-minute cadence. Its purpose is to find the brightest transiting exoplanet systems, expected in the V=4-8 magnitude range - currently not probed by space- or ground-based surveys. The bright/nearby transiting planet systems, which MASCARA will discover, will be the key targets for detailed planet atmosphere observations. We present studies on the initial design of a MASCARA station, including the camera housing, domes, and computer equipment, and on the photometric stability of low-cost cameras showing that a precision of 0.3-1% per hour can be readily achieved. We plan to roll out the first MASCARA station before the end of 2013. A 5-station MASCARA can within two years discover up to a dozen of the brightest transiting planet systems in the sky.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.03931

The Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA: Finding transiting exoplanets around bright (m V <8 ) stars

MASCARA-2 = KELT-20 = HD 185603

Was wondering if I'd missed MASCARA-1b. The MASCARA-2b paper indicates there is a forthcoming paper (Talens et al. 2017b, A&A Submitted), and the discussion indicates that it also orbits an early-type star. I'm guessing this one came out first because the KELT team also discovered the planet.

MASCARA-1 b: A hot Jupiter transiting a bright mV=8.3 A-star in a misaligned orbit
https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.04262

Quote :

We report the discovery of MASCARA-1 b, the first exoplanet discovered with the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA (MASCARA). It is a hot Jupiter orbiting a bright mV=8.3, rapidly rotating (vsini⋆>100 km s−1) A8 star with a period of 2.148780±8×10−6 days. The planet has a mass and radius of 3.7±0.9 MJup and 1.5±0.3 RJup, respectively. As with most hot Jupiters transiting early-type stars we find a misalignment between the planet orbital axis and the stellar spin axis, which may be signature of the formation and migration histories of this family of planets. MASCARA-1 b has a mean density of 1.5±0.9 g cm−3 and an equilibrium temperature of 2570+50−30 K, one of the highest temperatures known for a hot Jupiter to date. The system is reminiscent of WASP-33, but the host star lacks apparent delta-scuti variations, making the planet an ideal target for atmospheric characterization. We expect this to be the first of a series of hot Jupiters transiting bright early-type stars that will be discovered by MASCARA.

The host star is HD 201585.
I've taken the original MASCARA thread and re-dedicated it to further news and developments to help with housekeeping.

MASCARA-4 b/bRing-1b - A retrograde hot Jupiter around the bright A3V star HD 85628
https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02733

Quote :

In this paper, we aim to characterize a transiting planetary candidate in the southern skies found in the combined MASCARA and bRing data sets of HD 85628, an A3V star of V = 8.2 mag at a distance 172 pc, to confirm its planetary nature. The candidate was originally detected in data obtained jointly with the MASCARA and bRing instruments using a BLS search for transit events. Further photometry was taken by the 0.7 m CHAT, and radial velocity measurements with FIDEOS on the ESO 1.0 m Telescope. High resolution spectra during a transit were taken with CHIRON on the SMARTS 1.5 m telescope to target the Doppler shadow of the candidate. We confirm the existence of a hot Jupiter transiting the bright A3V star HD 85628, which we co-designate as MASCARA-4b and bRing-1b. It is in a 2.824 day orbit, with an estimated planet radius of 1.530.070.04 RJup and an estimated planet mass of 3.1±0.9 MJup, putting it well within the planet mass regime.. The CHAT observations show a partial transit, reducing the probability that the transit was around a faint background star. The CHIRON observations show a clear Doppler shadow, implying that the transiting object is in a retrograde orbit with |λ|=247.5±1.6\textdegree. The planet orbits at at a distance of 0.047 ± 0.004 AU from the star and has a zero-albedo equilibrium temperature of 2100 ± 100 K. In addition, we find that HD 85628 has a previously unreported stellar companion star in the Gaia DR2 data demonstrating common proper motion and parallax at 4.3 arcsecond separation (projected separation ∼740 AU), and with absolute magnitude consistent with being a K/M dwarf.

MASCARA-3 b has been skipped. Yet it exists...

Edasich wrote:

MASCARA-3 b has been skipped. Yet it exists...

Here's the paper,

MASCARA-3b: A hot Jupiter transiting a bright F7 star in an aligned orbit
https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05254

But note MASCARA-3 = KELT-24 = HD 93148.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.08415

High-resolution Transmission Spectroscopy of MASCARA-2 b with EXPRES

https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.05031

Spi-OPS: Spitzer and CHEOPS confirm the near-polar orbit of MASCARA-1 b and reveal a hint of dayside reflection

The light curves of tidally-locked hot Jupiters transiting fast-rotating, early type stars are a rich source of information about both planet and star, with full-phase coverage enabling a detailed atmospheric characterisation of the planet. Although it is possible to determine the true spin-orbit angle Ψ, a notoriously difficult parameter to measure, from any transit asymmetry resulting from gravity darkening induced by the stellar rotation, the correlations that exist between the transit parameters have led to large disagreements in published values of Ψ for some systems. We aimed to study these phenomena in the light curves of the ultra-hot Jupiter MASCARA-1 b. We obtained optical CHEOPS transit and occultation light curves of MASCARA-1 b, and analysed them jointly with a Spitzer/IRAC 4.5 μm full-phase curve. When fitting the CHEOPS and Spitzer transits together, the degeneracies are greatly diminished and return results consistent with previously published Doppler tomography. Placing priors informed by the tomography achieves even better precision, allowing a determination of Ψ=72.1+2.5−2.4 deg. From the occultations and phase variations we derived dayside and nightside temperatures of 3062+66−68 K and 1720±330 K, respectively. In addition, we can separately derive geometric albedo Ag=0.171+0.066−0.068 and spherical albedo As=0.266+0.097−0.100 from the CHEOPS data, and Bond albedo AB=0.057+0.083−0.101 from the Spitzer phase curve. Where possible, priors informed by Doppler tomography should be used when fitting transits of fast-rotating stars, though multi-colour photometry may also unlock an accurate measurement of Ψ. Our approach to modelling the phase variations at different wavelengths provides a template for how to separate thermal emission from reflected light in spectrally-resolved JWST phase curve data.