Category Archives: TESS

WASP-132c: A rocky companion to hot-Jupiter WASP-132b

Most hot Jupiters are lonely planets. If they have companions, they are far out in distant orbits. Thus it was a surprise when a K2 lightcurve of WASP-47 detected transits of two small, rocky planets, one orbiting inside the hot Jupiter WASP-47b, and the other orbiting just outside (Becker etal 2015).

TESS light-curves showing transits of hot-Jupiter WASP-132b (bottom) and the newly discovered inner planet, WASP-132c (top).

Now a new paper led by Ben Hord reports a small companion planet to hot-Jupiter WASP-132b. Discovered in TESS light-curves and dubbed WASP-132c, this planet has an orbital period of 1 day and a size just below two Earth radii.

This is only the fourth hot-Jupiter system found to have small companion planets.

Schematics of the four known systems where a hot Jupiter has a rocky planet as a close companion. (From Hord et al, note that the diagram is not to scale.)

As explained by Hord et al: “The existence of a planetary companion near the hot Jupiter WASP-132 b makes the giant planet’s formation and evolution via high-eccentricity migration highly unlikely. Being one of just a handful of nearby planetary companions to hot Jupiters, WASP-132 c carries with it significant implications for the formation of the system and hot Jupiters as a population.”

TESS observes the WASP-148 system

The hot Jupiter WASP-148b is rather unusual, since it has a sibling planet, WASP-148c in a 35-day orbit (Hébrard et al. 2020). The system was recently observed by TESS leading to a new paper by Gracjan Maciejewski et al. (Nicolaus Copernicus University and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía).

The gravitational tug of the outer planet WASP-148c perturbs the orbit of the hot Jupiter WASP-148b. Here are deviations in the timings of the hot-Jupiter’s transit (the green points are new timings from TESS, the blue points are from observations from the Sierra Nevada Observatory, the red line is a model based on the masses and orbits of the planets):

The great boon of transit-timing information is that it leads to measurements of the masses of the planets, which can be combined with radial-velocity measurements to give a better overall characterisation of the system.

Maciejewski et al. also searched the TESS data for transits of the outer planet. The yellow areas are the predicted time of transit, should the planet’s orbital inclination be sufficiently high (the red line is a model showing the predicted depth of the transit; the black triangle marks a transit of the hot Jupiter WASP-148b). There is no indication that WASP-148c transits.

Confirmation of the changing orbital period of WASP-12b

A new paper by Jake Turner et al (Cornell University) analyses TESS data on WASP-12b, showing that the transit timings confirm that the orbital period of the planet is getting shorter.

The orbit is changing on a timescale of 3 Myrs — if it continues the planet will spiral into its star on that timescale. The natural interpretation is that the orbital decay is being caused by tides that the gravitational pull of the planet arouses in the host star. We don’t yet properly understand the effect that tides have on the star, or how internal waves created by the tides then dissipate their energy. Thus the observations of WASP-12b point to the need for a better theoretical understanding of stellar interiors.

Of course the period change has only been measured over a decade, and this is vastly shorter than the orbital-decay timescale. Thus it could be that other mechanisms that we don’t know about can cause short-term changes in planet’s orbital periods. Ongoing monitoring of all the WASP hot Jupiters is thus needed to properly understand what is going on. The TESS satellite, which will observe most hot Jupiters every two years or so, on an ongoing basis, is the perfect tool for the task.

Update: Here’s a Twitter thread by the lead author, Jake Turner.

More TESS phase curves of WASP exoplanets

Ian Wong et al have produced a new analysis of the TESS data on previously known WASP exoplanets. Their main interest is the “phase curve”, the variation of the light around the planet’s orbit.

Two examples are the systems WASP-72 and WASP-100:

In addition to the main transit (planet passing in front of the star) the phase curves show secondary eclipses (planet passing behind the star, at phase 0.5) and a sinusoidal variation due to the heated face of the planet. By modelling the phase-curves of these and other similar planets, Wong et al make the tentative suggestion that the hotter the planet (which can be measured from the depth of the secondary eclipse) the more reflective the atmosphere of the planet is.

Here’s a similar plot for WASP-30. Note, though, that the phase-curve variation peaks at phases 0.25 and 0.75, unlike those for WASP-72 and WASP-100. That’s because WASP-30b is not a planet but a brown dwarf, with a mass of 63 Jupiters. That is massive enough for its gravity to distort the host star into an ellipsoidal shape, and so in this system the variation of the light is caused by the varying projection of the distorted star around the orbit.

TESS phase curve of WASP-19b

The space-based photometry from the TESS satellite is producing high-quality light curves of many of the WASP exoplanets. Here is the lightcurve of WASP-19b, from a new paper by Ian Wong et al:

In addition to the transit (phase zero), the lightcurve shows a shallower eclipse of the planet (phase 0.5) and a broad variation caused by the changing aspect of the heated face of the planet. Unlike in some planets, the hottest part of the planet directly faces the star, so there is no offset in the phase of the broad modulation.

Wong et al deduce that the dayside face of the planet is heated to 2240 ± 40 K, that there is no flux detected from the colder night side, and that the planet reflects 16 ± 4 percent of the light that falls on it. The last value is relatively high compared to other planets.

Gravity darkening of planet-host MASCARA-4

MASCARA is one of WASP’s competitor transit-search projects, so let’s celebrate a neat result from TESS data of transits of MASCARA-4b. The host star, MASCARA-4, is a hot, fast-rotating A-type star. As a result of its fast rotation, the equatorial regions are being flung outwards by centrifugal forces, such that the star has a flattened, oblate shape. As a result, the force of gravity will be less at the equator than at the poles of the star, and that means that the equatorial regions will be slightly cooler and so a bit dimmer (in outline, that’s because gravity inward pull is balanced by gas pressure, and so lower gravity means lower pressure, and the temperature of a gas is related to its temperature through the perfect gas law). This effect is called “gravity darkening”.

The star spins around its axis (thick line) while the planet orbits at an oblique angle.

In a new paper, John Ahlers et al have detected the effect of gravity darkening on a transit lightcurve of the hot Jupiter MASCARA-4b. The planet has a misaligned orbit, first coming onto the stellar face near the equator, and then moving towards a pole. That means it moves from slightly cooler regions to slightly hotter regions, and that changes the amount of light occulted by the planet.

If gravity darkening is not taken into account then the model fit is a bit too deep at the start and a bit too shallow at the end of the transit. One of the benefits of detecting this effect of gravity darkening is that it then tells us the true angle between the star’s spin axis and the planet’s orbit (whereas other methods, such as Doppler tomography, only tell us the projection of that angle onto the sky).

WASP-South detection of transits of HD 219666b

Transiting a bright star, the “Neptune desert” planet HD 219666b was one of the more important early discoveries from the TESS survey. With a depth of only 0.17 per cent, the transits would be a challenge for any ground-based transit survey.

Nevertheless, we think we’ve found them in WASP-South lightcurves dating back to 2010. Here they are:

The orange lines show times of transit, as found by the WASP transit-detection algorithms. The shallow dips seem to be real, since they align both in period and in phase with the dips seen in the TESS lightcurve. The output from the WASP search algorithm is not itself that convincing:

However, the period that it finds (6.03446 days) matches the TESS period to an accuracy of 0.03 per cent, and the WASP ephemeris then predicts the times of the TESS transits bang on (they occur at 420.99999 cycles on the WASP ephemeris), which together mean that the detection must be real. Here are the WASP data folded on a template of the TESS transit:

With a depth of 0.17 per cent, the transits of HD 219666b are the shallowest that WASP has detected.

The benefit of looking for such pre-detections of TESS planets is that we can then produce a transit ephemeris based on data spanning a baseline of 8 years, rather than the 20 days spanned by the TESS transits. This means we can predict future transits to an accuracy of minutes, instead of hours, which is highly useful for future observations. Hence this WASP-South detection of HD 219666b transits is well worth an AAS Research Note.

WASP-121b observed by TESS

As is sometimes the way when prime observations are open access, two independent papers (Daylan et al 2019; Bourrier et al 2019) have, on the same day, announced independent analyses of the TESS lightcurve of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121b.

The phase curve shows the transit (time zero), a “phase curve” modulation caused by the varying visibility of the heated face of the planet (illustrated by schematics of the planet), and the eclipse (when the planet passes behind the star, at −15 hr).

Both analyses report similar findings, saying that the heated “hot spot” directly faces the star, rather than being offset in phase, which suggests that any re-circulation of heat by planetary winds is inefficient.

The planet’s atmosphere shows a temperature inversion (it is hotter at higher altitudes), which could result from absorption of heat by molecules of titanium and vanadium oxide, and H-minus ions.

Extra planets in WASP-18 and WASP-126?

With the TESS satellite observing most of the WASP planets as it surveys the sky, one can use the space-based data quality to look for “transit timing variations” in the WASP planet transits. Such TTVs — slight changes in the time of recurrence of a transit — can be caused by the gravitational perturbation of other planets in the system, and thus can reveal the presence of extra planets even when they themselves do not transit.

A new paper by Kyle Pearson, of the University of Arizona, reports evidence for TTVs in the TESS light-curves of WASP-18 and WASP-126.

Here is the TESS light-curve of WASP-18, showing the transits of the known planet WASP-18b:

And here are possible changes in the transit times, varying systematically with a 2.1-day period (red line):

Here now is the TESS light-curve of WASP-126, showing transits of WASP-126b:

And here are possible TTVs varying systematically with a period of 7.7 days (red line):

The evidence is not yet sufficiently water-tight to be sure of the existence of the extra planets, without adding in further data, but this study points to lots of similar work using TESS data as it continues its multi-year survey.

Early arrival of WASP-4b transits

As NASA’s TESS satellite surveys the Southern sky is it observing many of the WASP planets. One interesting piece of analysis is to check how the transit timings compare with predictions, to look for changes in the orbital periods.

Here’s a plot from a new paper by Luke Bouma et al.

The orange Gaussians show the error range within which TESS-observed transits would be expected to occur, based on previous data, if there has been no change in the period. The blue Gaussians are the actual TESS measurements.

For most of the planets the two ranges overlap, which means the transit times are as expected. For WASP-4 (top-left), however, the transits arrived early by 80 secs, too much to be accounted for by the expected error in the ephemeris.

This suggests that the period of WASP-4b might be changing rather rapidly.

Since TESS is likely to re-observe the Southern hemisphere in future years, it will be interesting to see what happens next.