The measurement of the light scattered from extrasolar planets informs atmospheric and formation models .
With the discovery of many hot Jupiter planets orbiting nearby stars , this motivates the development of robust methods of characterisation from follow up observations .
In this paper we discuss two methods for determining the planetary albedo in transiting systems .
First , the most widely used method for measuring the light scattered by hot Jupiters ( ) is investigated for application for typical échelle spectra of a transiting planet system , showing that a detection requires high signal-to-noise ratio data of bright planets .
Secondly a new Fourier analysis method is also presented , which is model-independent and utilises the benefits of the reduced number of unknown parameters in transiting systems .
This approach involves solving for the planet and stellar spectra in Fourier space by least-squares .
The sensitivities of the methods are determined via Monte Carlo simulations for a range of planet-to-star fluxes .
We find the Fourier analysis method to be better suited to the ideal case of typical observations of a well constrained transiting system than the method .
To guide future observations of transiting planets with ground-based capabilities , the expected sensitivity to the planet-to-star flux fraction is quantified as a function of signal-to-noise ratio and wavelength range .
We apply the Fourier analysis method for extracting the light scattered by transiting hot Jupiters from high resolution spectra to échelle spectra of HD 209458 and HD 189733 .
Unfortunately we are unable to improve on the previous upper limit of the planet-to-star flux for HD 209458b set by space-based observations .
A 1 \sigma upper limit on the planet-to-star flux of HD 189733b is measured in the wavelength range of 558.83–599.56 nm yielding \epsilon < 4.5 \times 10 ^ { -4 } .
This limit is not sufficiently strong to constrain models .
Improvement in the measurement of the upper limit of the planet-to-star flux of this system , with ground-based capabilities , requires data with a higher signal-to-noise ratio , and increased stability of the telescope .