Katherine Wilcox, Southern Utah University
Southern Utah University is one of four university partners who manage and operate the new Great Basin Observatory (GBO). As partners, SUU students have priority access to the remotely operated telescope for astronomical research. Since the GBO telescope is new, its capabilities are still unknown. In order to determine the telescope’s limits, we have started taking photometric measurements of exoplanet transit systems. We then verify that the photometric data is consistent with accepted values. So far we have successfully processed several transits. We plan to continue detecting exoplanet transit systems with lower signal to noise ratios until the transit dimming is too faint for our telescope to detect. Once our work is finished, we will have a better understanding of the GBO limits which will benefit future SUU students and other GBO university partners.