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J. H. Jones (NGCSU)
Since the first published reports of the detection of the extra-solar planet transit of HD 209458 (Henry, et al. 2000, ApJ, 529, L41; Charbonneau, et al. 2000, ApJ, 529, L45), we have been attempting to detect and measure the transits with high enough accuracy for useful data analysis of the light curves. Our goal is to improve our observational and data analysis techniques, and hopefully upgrade our equipment, until we are able to reliably acquire milli-magnitude multiband photometry of HD 209458 both on and off transit. We believe our observatory can fill a useful niche in the long term monitoring of HD 209458 and other such planet-transit stars that will surely be discovered in the future. There is also an important astronomy education component to our project as well. The chance for our undergraduate Physics majors to participate in important publishable research can be a great motivating factor for them to continue their academic careers into graduate school. Furthermore, the fact that they have participated in such a project makes our graduates more "marketable" to the graduate schools. We also have a high school teacher and student currently participating in our project. This shows the project is useful in providing astronomy outreach beyond our local institution.
We report here on our first detection of the planet-transit during the night of August 15-16, 2000 and also present our data from a series of transits during the month of October, 2000. Finally, we will present the project's current status at the time of the meeting.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jjones@ngcsu.edu