  We describe a project (transitsearch.org) currently attempting to discover
transiting intermediate-period planets orbiting bright parent stars, and we
simulate that project's performance. The discovery of such a transit would be
an important astronomical advance, bridging the critical gap in understanding
between HD209458b and Jupiter. However, the task is made difficult by
intrinsically low transit probabilities and small transit duty cycles. This
project's efficient and economical strategy is to photometrically monitor stars
that are known (from radial velocity surveys) to bear planets, using a network
of widely-spaced observers with small telescopes. These observers, each
individually capable of precision (1%) differential photometry, monitor
candidates during the time windows in which the radial velocity solution
predicts a transit if the orbital inclination is close to 90 degrees. We use
Monte Carlo techniques to simulate the performance of this network, performing
simulations with different configurations of observers in order to optimize
coordination of an actual campaign. Our results indicate that transitsearch.org
can reliably rule out or detect planetary transits within the current catalog
of known planet-bearing stars. A distributed network of skilled amateur
astronomers and small college observatories is a cost-effective method for
discovering the small number of transiting planets with periods in the range
10d < P < 200d that orbit bright (V < 11) stars.

Astrophysics