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The Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope is a small-aperture, wide-field telescope dedicated to time-series photometric observations. During an initial commissioning phase at the Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany, and subsequent operations at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence, France, a 3.1 {\deg} x 3.1 {\deg} circumpolar field close to the galactic plane centered at ({\alpha}, {\delta}) = (02h 39m 23s, +52{\deg} 01' 46") (J 2000.0) was observed between 2001 August and 2006 December during 52 nights. From the 32129 stars observed, a subsample of 145 stars with clear stellar variability was detected out of which 125 are newly identified variable objects. For five bright objects, the system parameters were derived by modeling the light curve., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables

The transit of Venus in 2004 offered the rare possibility to remotely sense a well-known planetary atmosphere using ground-based observations for absorption spectroscopy. Transmission spectra of Venus' atmosphere were obtained in the near infrared using the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) in Tenerife. Since the instrument was designed to measure the very bright photosphere of the Sun, extracting Venus' atmosphere was challenging. CO_2 absorption lines could be identified in the upper Venus atmosphere. Moreover, the relative abundance of the three most abundant CO_2 isotopologues could be determined. The observations resolved Venus' limb, showing Doppler-shifted absorption lines that are probably caused by high-altitude winds. This paper illustrates the ability of ground-based measurements to examine atmospheric constituents of a terrestrial planet atmosphere which might be applied in future to terrestrial extrasolar planets., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

The BEST wide-angle telescope installed at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence and operated in remote control from Berlin by the Institut fuer Planetenforschung, DLR, has observed the CoRoT target fields prior to the mission. The resulting archive of stellar photometric lightcurves is used to search for deep transit events announced during CoRoT's alarm-mode to aid in fast photometric confirmation of these events. The "initial run" field of CoRoT (IRa01) has been observed with BEST in November and December 2006 for 12 nights. The first "long run" field (LRc01) was observed from June to September 2005 for 35 nights. After standard CCD data reduction, aperture photometry has been performed using the ISIS image subtraction method. About 30,000 lightcurves were obtained in each field. Transits of the first detected planets by the CoRoT mission, CoRoT-1b and CoRoT-2b, were found in archived data of the BEST survey and their lightcurves are presented here. Such detections provide useful information at the early stage of the organization of follow-up observations of satellite alarm-mode planet candidates. In addition, no period change was found over ~4 years between the first BEST observation and last available transit observations., Comment: AJ, accepted

In this paper, we report on observations of the CoRoT LRa1 field with the Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope (BEST). The current paper is part of a series of papers describing the results of our stellar variability survey. The BEST is a small aperture telescope with a wide field of view (FOV). It is dedicated to searching for stellar variability within the target fields of the CoRoT space mission to aid in minimizing false-alarm rates and identify potential targets for additional science. The LRa1 field is CoRoT's second long run field located in the galactic anticenter direction. We observed the LRa1 stellar field on 23 nights between November and March 2005/2006. From 6099 stars marked as variable, 39 were classified as periodic variable stars and 27 of them are within the CoRoT FOV. We also confirmed the variability for four stars listed in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS).

The Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope II (BEST II) is a small wide field-of-view photometric survey telescope system located at the Observatorio Cerro Armazones, Chile. The high duty cycle combined with excellent observing conditions and millimagnitude photometric precision makes this instrument suitable for ground based support observations for the CoRoT space mission. Photometric data of the CoRoT LRa02 target field collected between November 2008 and March 2009 were analysed for stellar variability. The presented results will help in the future analysis of the CoRoT data, particularly in additional science programs related to variable stars. BEST II observes selected CoRoT target fields ahead of the space mission. The photometric data acquired are searched for stellar variability, periodic variable stars are identified with time series analysis of the obtained stellar light curves. We obtained the light curves of 104335 stars in the CoRoT LRa02 field over 41 nights. Variability was detected in light curves of 3726 stars of which 350 showed a regular period. These stars are, with the exception of 5 previously known variable stars, new discoveries., Comment: The figures with light curves can be find in the A&A journal as online only

We report on observations of the CoRoT IR01 field with the Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope (BEST). BEST is a small aperture telescope with a wide field of view (FOV). It is dedicated to search for variable stars within the target fields of the CoRoT space mission to aid in minimizing false-alarm rates and identify potential targets for additional science. CoRoT's observational programm started in February 2007 with the "initial run" field (IR01) observed for about two months. BEST observed this field for 12 nights spread over three months in winter 2006. From the total of 30426 stars observed in the IR01 field 3769 were marked as suspected variable stars and 54 from them showed clear periodicity. From these 19 periodic stars are within the part of the CoRoT FOV covered in our data set.

In this paper we report on observations of the CoRoT LRa1 field with the Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope (BEST). The current paper is part of the series of papers describing the results of our stellar variability survey. BEST is a small aperture telescope with a wide field-of-view (FOV). It is dedicated to search for stellar variability within the target fields of the CoRoT space mission to aid in minimizing false-alarm rates and identify potential targets for additional science. The LRa1 field is CoRoT's third observed field and the second long run field located in the galactic anticenter direction. We observed the LRa1 stellar field on 23 nights between November and March 2005/2006. From 6099 stars marked as variable, 39 were classified as periodic variable stars and 27 of them are within the CoRoT FOV. We also confirmed the variability for 4 stars listed in GCVS catalog.

The pioneer space mission for photometric exoplanet searches, CoRoT, steadily monitors about 12000 stars in each of its fields of view. Transit detection algorithms are applied to derive promising planetary candidates, which are then followed-up with ground-based observations. We present BAST (Berlin Automatic Search for Transits), a new algorithm for periodic transit detection, and test it on simulated CoRoT data. BAST searches for box-shaped signals in normalized, filtered, variability-fitted, and unfolded light curves. A low-pass filter is applied to remove high-frequency signals, and linear fits to subsections of data are subtracted to remove the star's variability. A search for periodicity is then performed in transit events identified above a given detection threshold. Some criteria are defined to better separate planet candidates from binary stars. From the analysis of simulated CoRoT light curves, we show that the BAST detection performance is similar to that of the Box-fitting Least-Square (BLS) method if the signal-to-noise ratio is high. However, the BAST box search for transits computes 10 times faster than the BLS method. By adding periodic transits to simulated CoRoT data, we show that the minimum periodic depth detectable with BAST is a linearly increasing function of the noise level. For low-noise light curves, the detection limit corresponds to a transit depth d~0.01%, i.e. a planet of 1 Earth radius around a solar-type star., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in A&A