The TERMS Project: Systematic Transit Exclusion

Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias inherent in the geometric transit probability. Monitoring known radial velocity planets at predicted transit times is a proven method of detecting transits, and presents an avenue through which to explore the mass-radius relationship of exoplanets at long periods around bright host stars. Here we describe transit window calculations for known radial velocity planets, techniques for refining their transit ephemerides, and observational methods for obtaining maximum coverage of transit windows. These methods are currently being implemented by the Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS), from which we present the latest results.