Transiting planetary system WASP-18

Through the use of telescope defocussing we achieve a photometric precision of 0.47 to 0.83mmag per observation over complete transit events. The data are analysed using the JKTEBOP code and three different sets of stellar evolutionary models.

We point out that seven of the nine known massive transiting planets have eccentric orbits, whereas significant orbital eccentricity has been detected for only four of the 46 less massive planets. This may indicate that there are two different populations of transiting planets, but could also be explained by observational biases. Further radial velocity observations of low-mass planets will make it possible to choose between these two scenarios.