Tag Archives: Canon 6D

Another Attempt at Exoplanet Transit Detection

23 Tuesday Jun 2026

Posted by in astronomy, astrophysics, Hopewell Observatorry, Math, Optics, science

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This time I attempted to detect a different transit of another star using two different setups:

a DSLR mounted on a big, heavy 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on a very sturdy AP1600GTO equatorial mount and a basic alt-az Seestar S50 all-in-one astro camera, both on the grounds of Hopewell Observatory in northern Virginia.

Can you spot where the exoplanet TOI-1259-b dimmed the light from its host star?

(Hint: this is a trick question!)

Here are the graphs I made from the data I collected:

Was it at A? Or did it happen at B? (Trick question!)

And this graph is what I got from my SeestarS50:

Psst:

Point A in the first graph was when I reduced the exposure time on the camera from 2 minutes to 30 seconds. That caused all of the fluxes to decrease, because cutting the time by 4 reduces the number of photons captured. Arrow B points to where the transit was supposed to happen, with a 2.7% decrease in brightness.

Do you see it?

Me neither.

In the second graph, done by the Seestar at the same location on the same night, smoothed as much as I can by averaging successive images, I again don’t see much evidence of a 2.7% dip in total flux.

Conclusion: chasing exoplanet transits looks like it could be easy, but it’s not.

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This graph here is no better.

Zero for Twelve on Exoplanet Transit Detection

18 Monday May 2026

Posted by in astronomy, astrophysics, education, Hopewell Observatorry, Math, science

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As you probably have guessed, detecting exoplanets is not easy.

So far I am about zero detections for 12 attempts.

My equipment has been a Seestar S50, and either a ZWO CMOS camera on an Explore Scientific 5″ f/7 triplet refractor, and a Canon 6D DSLR affixed to a venerable C-14 mounted on an Astrophysics 1600 GTO mount.

The Seestar is able to detect brightness changes in other variable stars like RRLyrae, but so far the small changes in flux from exoplanet transits gets drowned in the noise. The DSLR on the C-14 has much less noise, but I still haven’t seen any clear and obvious signs of a transit.

Here are graphs from my latest attempt at detecting WASP-135-b. In the first one, I plotted the fluxes of that star against four of the comparison stars. I added a fixed number to the fluxes of the other stars so you could see trends more clearly. Shortly after 3:30 AM, measurements became very strange for every single star. I was asleep at that time. I’m guessing that there were clouds. Do you see any noticeable dip in brightness of the target star at 3:07? I sure don’t.

In the second graph, I asked Excel to take the average of the fluxes of several of the comparison stars, and then divide the flux from WASP-135 by that average. Again, I see no dip at the appropriate time (Julian Day).

I used NINA to program my cameras and the Hopewell Observatory’s AP mount to take these images. I used ASTAP and AstroimageJ to load all of the images from my various cameras, figure out exactly where the cameras were pointing (aka plate solving), find a bunch of comparison stars, and then measure the fluxes of each of those stars, on each and every single 30-second frame. That set of software — all free!!!– has made all of this work much easier. Thank you to all the incredibly smart and generous people who wrote, and then made freely available, all those complicated computer programs!

I will try TOI-1811 tonight, with some different settings.