STELLAR PROPER MOTION AND THE TIMING OF PLANETARY TRANSITS

Duration and period of transits in extrasolar planetary systems can exhibit long-term variations for a variety of reasons. Here we investigate how systemic proper motion, which steadily re-orients planetary orbit with respect to our line of sight, affects the timing of transits. We find that in a typical system with a period of several days, proper motion at the level of 100 mas yr(-1) makes transit duration vary at a rate similar to 10-100 ms yr(-1). In some isolated systems this variation is at the measurable level (can be as high as 0.6 s yr(-1) for GJ436) and may exceed all other transit-timing contributions (due to the general relativity, stellar quadrupole, etc.). In addition, proper motion causes evolution of the observed period between transits P-obs via the Shklovskii effect at a rate greater than or similar to 10 mu s yr(-1) for the nearby transiting systems (0.26 ms yr(-1) in GJ436), which in some cases exceeds all other contributions to P-obs. Earth's motion around the Sun gives rise to additional periodic timing signal (even for systems with zero intrinsic proper motion) allowing a full determination of the spatial orientation of the planetary orbit. Unlike most other timing effects, the proper motion signatures persist even in systems with zero eccentricity and get stronger as the planetary period increases. They should be the dominant cause of transit-timing variations in isolated wide-separation (periods of months) systems that will be sought by Kepler.