The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey ( TERMS ) is a project which aims to detect transits of intermediate-long period planets by refining orbital parameters of the known radial velocity planets using additional data from ground based telescopes , calculating a revised transit ephemeris for the planet , then monitoring the planet host star during the predicted transit window .
Here we present the results from three systems that had high probabilities of transiting planets : HD 9446 b & c , HD 43691 b , & HD 179079 b .
We provide new radial velocity ( RV ) measurements that are then used to improve the orbital solution for the known planets .
We search the RV data for indications of additional planets in orbit and find that HD 9446 shows a strong linear trend of 4.8 \sigma .
Using the newly refined planet orbital solutions , which include a new best-fit solution for the orbital period of HD 9446 c , and an improved transit ephemerides , we found no evidence of transiting planets in the photometry for each system .
Transits of HD 9446 b can be ruled out completely and transits HD 9446 c & HD 43691 b can be ruled out for impact parameters up to b = 0.5778 and b = 0.898 respectively due to gaps in the photometry .
A transit of HD 179079 b can not be ruled out however due to the relatively small size of this planet compared to the large star and thus low signal to noise .
We determine properties of the three host stars through spectroscopic analysis and find through photometric analysis that HD 9446 exhibits periodic variability .