• Gelino, D. M.
• Hoard, D. W.
• Crepp, J.
• Fulton, B. J.
• Boden, A. F.
• Von Braun, K.
• Akeson, R. L.
• Van Eyken, Julian C.
• Stauffer, J. R.
• Shporer, A.
• Rebull, L. M.
• Ramírez, S. V.
• Plavchan, P.
• Kane, S. R.
• Howell, S. B.
• Beichman, C. A.

Abstract

The PTF Orion project is a part of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), a photometric survey for astronomical transients being undertaken with a dedicated wide-field CCD array installed on the Palomar 48" telescope. The camera consists of a 12-CCD array with a total nominal 7.8 square-degree field of view and 1-arcsecond pixels. The Orion project is based on intensive high-cadence time-series observations of a single pointing in the 7-10Myr old 25 Ori region, with the aims of searching for planets around stars at these young ages; studying eclipsing binary systems for testing star formation and evolution models; characterising stellar activity and rotational periods at this age range; and characterising previously unknown young stars in the region. Among the results from 40 nights of observing from December 2009 and January 2010 are several late-type (likely M0 or later) sources which show interesting shallow ( 5% or less) eclipses. One in particular appears to be a variable weak-lined T-Tauri star with regular3%-depth transit-like features at a period of 0.4485d, which may be indicative of a sub-stellar companion. We present initial results from photometric and spectroscopic followup of this object.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• laser emission spectroscopy