Observing HD209458

["Michael Gutzwiller" <deepsky@fuse.net>]

Transits of the "hot Jupiter" orbiting HD209458 will soon be visible at my
location.  Since one of my goals is to produce photometry good enough to see
these transits I plan to use HD209458 as a proof of concept.  Through a gap
in the clouds I was able to get preliminary data on this star the other
night.  Although the clouds cleared only for about 30 minutes I did get 9
exposures during this time.  With large enough apertures I was able to get
the photometry down to a sigma of 0.006 in I and 0.009 in V.  This should be
good enough to see a significant dip since HD209458 dims by 0.015 magnitudes
when the planet transits.

Since the transit lasts 3 hours I can not see the entire transit so instead
I am targeting the ingress and egress events.  The schedule for the next
opportunities at my site are:

Date          Event      UT      Local Time   Hour Angle

July 29       egress     05:08   01:08         -4.35
August 12     ingress    08:44   03:44         -0.83
September 20  egress     00:25   20:25          1.35
October 4     ingress    05:01   01:01          4.87
November 11   egress     23:42   18:42          7.05
November 19   ingress    02:32   21:32        -14.19
November 26   ingress    02:18   21:18         10.57

The times and hour angles are for my location.  If anyone else is interested
in trying to observe the same events I can calculate the local time and hour
angle for you.


Mike G.