Wide-field transit surveys and the radial velocity technique struggle to detect exoplanets around bright, early-type stars. Wide-field transit surveys expose for fainter stars to capture a greater number of targets, but leave bright stars saturated. The radial velocity technique relies on measuring Doppler shifts in a large number of stellar spectral lines. Early-type stars have fewer and broader spectral lines. As a result of these biases, less than ten planets have been detected around stars with Vmag<8 and effective temperatures >6,500 K via the transit or radial velocity method, despite having discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets. More discoveries of exoplanets around bright stars would allow for higher signal-to-noise atmospheric characterization. The radiation environment of early-type stars, which is distinctly different than late-type stars, may have a different influence on the evolution of extended and bound planetary atmospheres. To broaden our sample of exoplanet host stars, I utilize Wesleyan University's 24-inch automated telescope to survey individual early bright stars to search for planet transits. I discuss the initial design and implementation of this long-term program. I describe the suite of programs developed for this survey to analyze, model and simulate planetary transits. With the pilot observations, I identify potential transits and present the observations of a highly variable star that may have a companion. With the potential transits, I used modeling to derive their properties. I explore and simulate the sensitivity of our survey in terms of planet size and orbital period. Through this work, we have demonstrated the ability to detect Jupiter-sized planets around the bright, early-type stars in our sample. We have categorized the detection limits of our survey and demonstrated the potential of discoveries beyond planets including intrinsically variable and eclipsing binary stars. There likely exists a population of exoplanets around early-type stars that we currently are unaware of. Their detection would be of profound value for many follow-up studies of exoplanets, particularly for atmospheric characterization.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Astronomy","Exoplanets","Transits"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 28404