The K2 spacecraft is monitoring a series of fields along the ecliptic and so producing Kepler-quality photometry on some of the exoplanet systems previously discovered by WASP.

WASP-118b is an inflated hot-Jupiter planet (0.5 Jupiter masses but 1.4 Jupiter radii) on a 4-day orbit around a bright F-type star of V = 11. It was observed for 75 days in K2‘s Campaign 8. Teo Močnik et al have now analysed the data and see transits of the planet, as expected:

The upper black curve is the raw data, while the lower red curve has been corrected for artefacts caused by drifts in K2‘s pointing. Nineteen transits are seen, recurring with the 4-day orbital period.

But Teo Močnik noticed that the out-of-transit photometry was not as flat as expected. After further investigation he deduced that the host star is pulsating:

The pulsations have a timescale of 1.9 days and a very low amplitude of 2 parts in 10 000, only discernable given a lightcurve with Kepler‘s photometric accuracy. Thus WASP-118 appears to be a γ-Doradus pulsator, possibly the first γ-Dor variable known to host a transiting exoplanet.