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Is there any way to calculate (or at least estimate) mass of an exoplanet from transit method? I know that mass can be calculated with radial velocity method, however I would like to create program for processing Kepler light curves (without radial velocity data).

The data I have are:

  • radius, mass, surface temperature and luminosity of star,
  • orbital period, semi-major axis and radius of exoplanet,
  • duration and depth of transit.
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2 Answers 2

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For the case of a single planet, you can't. The transit method is sensitive to the radius of the planet, not the mass.

For a multi-planet system, you can use variations in the timing of the transits caused by the gravitational interaction between the planets to infer the masses, for example as done in this paper by Nesvorný & Morbidelli (2008). These timing variations can be very significant if the planets are located close to mean-motion resonances (i.e. the ratio between the orbital periods being close to a fraction with small denominator, e.g. 1:2 or 2:3).

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Antispinwards is correct. However, for the practical purpose of estimating a mass, you can construct a mass-radius plot for all the exoplanets with known mass, use this to define a mean mass-radius relationship (which has significant scatter), and then use that relationshipto assign a mass to your planet.

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