The Exoplanets Group at Chabot Space & Science Center conducts
weekly observing sessions using Chabot telescopes in an effort
to verify discoveries of extra-solar planets (exoplanets). How
Is It Done? Working from prioritized star lists provided by the
Lick Observatory group (TransitSearch.org), Chabot's Exoplanets
Group captures images of selected candidate stars, along with
nearby "reference" stars, seeking to detect any reduction in the
brightness of the candidate star that may be caused by a planet
crossing in front of it ("transiting"). Images are taken at
different wavelengths and processed using associated dark- and
flat-field images to remove camera-related effects that
introduce errors. The software package MaxIM DL is used to
perform the processing. The photometric program AIP4Win is used
to measure the brightness of stars in the processed images. The
output consists of a table of the photometric instrumental
magnitudes for all the measured stars, along with CCD camera
statistics that indicate the q