Optical characterization and Radial velocity monitoring of Exoplanet and Eclipsing Binary candidates

Abstract

In recent times, many new exoplanet and eclipsing binary candidates are reported, particularly from the archival data produced by the Kepler space mission destined to detect exoplanets in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the sky. In the framework of Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy & Astrophysics (BINA) project, we also initiated a long-term programme ”Optical characterization and Radial velocity monitoring with Belgian and Indian Telescopes (ORBIT)” which aims at collecting ground-based photometric and high-resolution spectroscopic observations of exoplanet candidates as well as low-mass eclipsing binary candidates using the Indo-Belgian telescopes. We initially focus our study on a few bright candidates for which high-precision radial velocity and photometry could be possible from the available facilities within the BINA network. Our aim is to determine the physical parameters of these candidate stars in order to derive their true nature. Having a large enough sample of low-mass objects from this survey as well as from those reported in the earlier surveys, we intend to understand the mass-radius relation which is still debated for the low-mass regime of the main-sequence stars.