Orbital alignment and star-spot properties in the WASP-52 planetary system

Abstract

We report 13 high-precision light curves of eight transits of the exoplanet WASP-52b, obtained by using four medium-class telescopes,through different filters, and adopting the defocussing technique. One transit was recorded simultaneously from two different observatories and another one from the same site but with two different instruments,including a multi-band camera. Anomalies were clearly detected in five light curves and modelled as star-spots occulted by the planet during the transit events. We fitted the clean light curves with the jktebop code,and those with the anomalies with the prism+gemc codes in order to simultaneously model the photometric parameters of the transits and the position, size and contrast of each star-spot. We used these new light curves and some from the literature to revise the physical properties of the WASP-52 system. Star-spots with similar characteristics were detected in four transits over a period of 43 days. In the hypothesis that we are dealing with the same stars-pot, periodically occulted by the transiting planet, we estimated the projected orbital obliquity of WASP-52b to be λ = 3.°8 ± 8.°4. We also determined the true orbital obliquity, ψ = 20° ± 50°, which is, although very uncertain, the first measurement of ψ purely from star-spot crossings. We finally assembled an optical transmission spectrum of the planet and searched for variations of its radius as a function of wavelength. Our analysis suggests a flat transmission spectrum within the experimental uncertainties.