Princeton University Thunch Talk

Using TESS Full Frame Images to find exoplanets transiting faint stars

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is proceeding with its mission of discovering transiting, small exoplanets hosted by bright stars that are amenable to mass measurements, and hence, bulk and atmospheric characterization. Accordingly, exoplanet searches using TESS have so far been focused on bright host stars or a specific population (e.g., young) of stars. In this talk, I will provide an overview of our ongoing efforts in extending TESS's homogeneous survey of transiting exoplanets to fainter hosts with a limiting magnitude of T=13.5. Towards this purpose, we use the Quick Look Pipeline (QLP) light curves and construct various summary metrics from the FFIs to vet Threshold Crossing Events (TCEs) by excluding false positives such as nearby Eclipsing Binaries (EBs), stellar variability, and systematics. Preliminary results of this effort recently allowed the number of TOIs to surpass 4400 and, as we begin Cycle 4, we expect an additional ~1500 exoplanet candidates by the end of the extended mission. This projected yield is especially important to achieve a full-sky demographic survey of exoplanets with a well-characterized selection function.

Date & Time

October 28, 2021 | 12:15pm – 1:15pm

Location

Virtual Meeting

Speakers

Tansu Daylan

Affiliation

Princeton University and MIT