The WASP-South search for transiting exoplanets

Abstract

Abstract. Since 2006 WASP-South has been scanning the Southern sky for tran-siting exoplanets. Combined with Geneva Observatory radial velocities we have so far found over 30 transiting exoplanets around relatively bright stars of magnitude 9–13. We present a status report for this ongoing survey. 1. WASP-South By 2004 several groups were pursuing systematic surveys for transiting exoplanets, including HAT (Bakos et al. 2004), OGLE (Udalski et al. 2002), TrES (O’Donovan et al. 2006) and XO (McCullough et al. 2006), and the WASP consortium had begun operating a “SuperWASP ” camera array on La Palma in the Northern hemisphere (Pollacco et al. 2006). In the South the OGLE project were finding planets around stars of magnitude 15–16, but there was a clear opportunity for WASP’s wide-field, bright-sky strategy, aimed at stars of magnitude 9–13. Funding from consortium universities was secured in 2004, leading to the construc-tion of WASP-South at the South African Astronomical Observatory, closely copying Pollacco’s design for the La Palma SuperWASP. Routine robotic operations commenced