Precision Photometry for the Next Generation Transit Survey

Finding Neptune and Super-Earth sized planets from the ground poses a serious technical challenge. The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a groundbased transit survey designed to produce precision photometry down to 13th magnitude to enable these kinds of discoveries. The production of high signal to noise calibration frames is discussed as part of the NGTS reduction pipeline. Next, the red noise properties of the data are looked at in detail in order to understand if any of the pipeline components are contributing correlated noise to the lightcurves. The NGTS data is search for single transit events using change point analysis, producing one strong single transit candidate. Finally, photometric follow-up observations from the South Africa Astronomical Observatory are undertaken with the aim of characterising and vetting NGTS candidates.