Exoplanetary science with the Next Generation Transit Survey

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The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a new ground-based search for transiting exoplanets. Its primary goal is to find Neptune and Super-Earth sized planets around stars that are bright enough to enable follow-up studies to investigate the planet's atmospheric composition. NGTS builds on the heritage of SuperWASP, which found over 100 Jupiter-sized worlds around other stars. Although the Kepler mission has found thousands of exoplanets, most of those orbit stars that are too faint for follow-up work. By surveying a much larger fraction of the sky, NGTS will identify many of the nearest, brightest and most exciting exoplanets.The NGTS observatory consists of twelve 20cm telescopes working together to provide a wide 96 square degree field of view. Each telescope is equipped with a "deep depleted" CCD Camera that is most sensitive at red optical wavelengths, and therefore ideal for maximising the probability of finding small planets orbiting small, cool K and M dwarf stars. NGTS aims to achieve photometric precision of 0.1%, a factor 10 improvement on SuperWASP.The NGTS observatory is located at the European Southern Observatory's primary station at Paranal, Chile, the home of the famous VLT.The project will involve analysing and exploiting data from the survey. A key aim is to participate in obtaining follow-up photometric observations designed to distinguish genuine transit events from mimics such as binaries and line-of-sight triple systems. An additional aim is to develop techniques and algorithms to mine the NGTS data for rare and exotic objects that have been discovered in transiting surveys in recent years, for example giant ring systems, dust and debris clouds, planets being destroyed, and new phenomena like the "alien megastructures" star.