Transiting exoplanet TrES-3b CCD UBVR photometry

Vidotto, Jardine and Helling suggest that the magnetic field of TrES-3b can be constrained if its near-UV light curve shows an early ingress compared to its optical light curve, while its egress remains unaffected. Predicted magnetic field strengths of Jupiter-like planets should range between 8G and 30G.

Using these magnetic field values and an assumed B* of 100G, the Vidotto et al. method predicts a timing difference of 5-11min. We did not detect an early ingress in our three nights of near-UV observations, despite an average cadence of 68 s and an average photometric precision of 3.7mmag. However, we determined an upper limit of TrES-3b's magnetic field strength to range between 0.013 and 1.3G (for a 1-100G magnetic field strength range for the host star, TrES-3) using a timing difference of 138s derived from the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.