PHYS 3070 course project · York University

Exoplanet transit photometry

I captured an exoplanet transit with York University’s 1-metre telescope and wrote the Python processing pipeline used to turn the raw FITS frames into a light curve.

FITSAperture photometryCalibrationJupyter

Explore the full notebook View source Download raw data

Three-panel notebook result showing the observed star field, brightness measurements, and differential transit light curve — An actual output from my notebook: the observed field, measured brightness curves, and final differential transit light curve.

Project overview

Processing a transit from raw telescope images.

I completed this as my course project for PHYS 3070, Planets and Planetary Systems, a third-year York University course. I observed the transit with the Allan I. Carswell Observatory’s 1-metre Cassegrain telescope and wrote the reduction in Python.

I now TA PHYS 3070 and deliver lectures on exoplanet transits, observational methods, and Python-based transit analysis. The notebook below is the complete course project, with the raw observation data included.

What I did

Observing and data reduction.

Collected the observations

Captured a time series around the predicted transit window with the York University 1-metre telescope.

Wrote the processing pipeline

Calibrated the FITS frames, measured stellar flux with aperture photometry, and normalized the target using comparison stars.

Produced the light curve

Processed the full observation sequence and documented the analysis in an executable Jupyter notebook.

Processing steps

FITS frames to transit light curve.

Calibrate the frames

Correct detector and background effects before measuring any stellar flux.

Measure the stars

Use consistent apertures and background estimates for the target and comparison stars.

Calculate differential photometry

Normalize the target against stable field stars to reduce atmospheric and instrumental variation.

Plot the transit

Build the time series and inspect the transit shape and scatter.

Complete project

Jupyter notebook and raw observations.

The embedded notebook contains the processing code, intermediate steps, plots, and final light curve. The raw observation data are linked beside it.

Open notebook full screen Notebook source Raw observation data

If the embedded notebook does not load, open it directly.

Course and teaching context

PHYS 3070: Planets and Planetary Systems

This started as my third-year course project. I now return to the same course as a teaching assistant and deliver lectures on exoplanet transits, observational methods, and Python transit analysis.

The full notebook and raw observation data are available above.