COROTlux

A lightcurve simulator for COROT

Simulated lightcurve with a ... background planet
A few words

COROTlux is an IDL open source code that attempts to reproduce lightcurves from COROT.
At the time being, it is mostly a basis on which to build. It has been developed at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, with contributions from many (list of kind contributors).

Some significant sources of noise (jitter, south atlantic anomaly) are not included.
Only one COROT psf (obtained near the center of the focal plane) is used. Only 5 kinds of masks, no color information.

You're welcome to use the code and improve it. Please email me any corrections/improvements/comments.

COROTlux is presently useful to study astrophysical noises (background binaries and/or stellar variability) and their effect on planet detection.
Stellar variability has been implemented according to the SIMLC code written by S. Aigrain.

The following figure (results.ps from COROTlux) for 1 COROT EXO CCD shows that planets will be hard to dig out of the astrophysical signal!
# events after 150 days in 1 COROT CCD
The numerous background binaries are due to the defocusing of the telescope and subsequent large mask size (51 pixels here).
Similar results are found in Brown (2003), ApJ
So... let's be prepared!


DOWNLOADS:

Presentation at COROT week 6 (pdf file)
Update: COROT week 7 (pdf file)
With COROT PSF & realistic magnitude counts: COROT SC 14 (pdf file)

COROTlux (gunzipped, tarred file) version:2005-03-09


Important files in COROTlux

README As usual, first thing to read...
MODIFS list of modifications to the code
corotlux.pro main program (run "idl corotlux", the rest should follow...); contains parameters to be changed
crea.pro creates the stellar field
companions.pro adds binaries and ternaries (using results from the Duquennoy & Mayor survey)
targets.pro chooses COROT's main EXO targets (magnitude 12 to 16)
planets.pro adds planets according to present RV surveys (with a possibility to add predictions by Ida & Lin 2004, ApJ)
cr_mask.pro generates an ensemble of masks (presently limited to 5!)
mask_ccd.pro calculates the number of stars that are tied to each mask
contribution.pro calculates the contribution of each star to a given mask
results.pro lists a number of masks that are potentially interesting (although all ~6000 masks should be analyzed blindly); produces figure results.ps showed above
lum_mask.pro
 calculates the 150-days lightcurve of a given mask (output in plt_lux.ps)

DISCLAIMER: the code is still partly in French; it is not always homogeneous; parameters should be entered from the script level rather than editing corotlux.pro
       ...etc., etc.


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