New Scientist has a teaser article(sub) about Corot...
Sounds like Corot is exceeding specs and will exceed specifications - if I translate it correctly they will get to under 100 ppm, compared to specs of 700 ppm for photometry of their brighter sources.
That is pushing close to Kepler sensitivity and will make them sensitive to smaller, and lower mass, planets.
They will still be limited to shorter orbital periods, but they may push into the habitable planets in the habitable zone for K dwarfs, and definitely for M dwarfs.
Soooon.
Nature is also dropping hints(sub)
This is fun.
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So how is it actually possible for it to perform about 10 times better than expected? Did they deliberately build COROT with extra capabilities, just in case? Or are they able to bring out more signal with better data analysis, or what?
I want to second brian's comments. Either they were very conservative in publicising the expected sensitivity, or perhaps better signal processing algorithms have come along? The latter isn't too hard to imagine, as satellites take several years to design/build/launch and a lot of technologies can significantly advance in the meantime.
BBC reports the discovery of the first COROT planet, Corot-exo-1b:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6611557.stm
It is apparently an inflated hot Jupiter with a mass of 1.3 Mj and diameter of 1.5-1.8 Rj, which makes it the largest planet found so far.
Either they were very conservative in publicising the expected sensitivity, or perhaps better signal processing algorithms have come along?
I suppose it could be that the detector had an unexpectedly low amount of noise. Usually electronic CCD detectors will have some spurious signals caused by residual currents, and some noise is introduced when the CCD is read out. That signal might wash out the tiny dip in brightness as a small planet transits. Perhaps for some reason whoever built it did a much better job than usual. (Or again, maybe the algorithms can bring out the dip from the noise).
But on some level, I would expect Poisson statistics to limit how good a telescope is at detecting a transit. The telescope is only collecting a certain number of photons per second. Because of that discreteness, small changes in brightness would be impossible to discern. Statistical fluctuations will wash out real changes. Since the number of photons you're getting is limited by the size of the telescope and the flux from the star, I'd expect there to be a hard limit around there.
(I don't have access to either article, so I don't know if the reasons are given there. The COROT website seems to hint that it does have something to do with the way they're processing data to get rid of noise.)
It is apparently an inflated hot Jupiter with a mass of 1.3 Mj and diameter of 1.5-1.8 Rj, which makes it the largest planet found so far.
It also seems to be roughly consistent with the period-surface gravity relation for transiting hot Jupiters, a bit on the low side for 1.8 Rj. Hopefully more discoveries will be announced soon.
The New Scientist article is no longer "sub".