Using small robotic telescopes to verify TESS exoplanet candidates

The Orson Pratt Observatory (OPO) at Brigham Young University (BYU) is home to several small robotic telescopes that are used for research by faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. One use of these telescopes is to verify transiting exoplanet candidates found by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Through differential photometry, the OPO telescopes are used to determine if candidates are planets, eclipsing binary stars, or otherwise. Undergraduate students are taught how to use the OPO telescopes through mentored research offered in the observational astronomy course and the telescopes are also available to undergraduate students for research for their senior theses. In this poster we highlight the properties of the robotic telescopes and strategies we employ to detect the extremely small transit depths for the TESS targets.