The First Habitable Zone Earth-Sized Planet From TESS II: Spitzer Confirms TOI-700 d

Joseph E. Rodriguez, Andrew Vanderburg, Sebastian Zieba, Laura Kreidberg, Caroline V. Morley, Stephen R. Kane, Alton Spencer, Samuel N. Quinn, Jason D. Eastman, Ryan Cloutier, Chelsea X. Huang, Karen A. Collins, Andrew W. Mann, Emily Gilbert, Joshua E. Schlieder, Elisa V. Quintana, Thomas Barclay, Gabrielle Suissa, Ravi kumar Kopparapu, Courtney D. Dressing, George R. Ricker, Roland K. Vanderspek, David W. Latham, Sara Seager, Joshua N. Winn, Jon M. Jenkins, Zachory Berta-Thompson, Patricia T. Boyd, David Charbonneau, Douglas A. Caldwell, Eugene Chiang, Jessie L. Christiansen, David R. Ciardi, Knicole D. Colón, John Doty, Tianjun Gan, Natalia Guerrero, Maximilian N. Günther, Eve J. Lee, Alan M. Levine, Eric Lopez, Philip S. Muirhead, Elisabeth Newton, Mark E. Rose, Joseph D. Twicken, Jesus Noel Villaseñor

(Submitted on 3 Jan 2020)

We present Spitzer 4.5μm observations of the transit of TOI-700 d, a habitable zone Earth-sized planet in a multiplanet system transiting a nearby M-dwarf star (TIC 150428135, 2MASS J06282325-6534456). TOI-700 d has a radius of 1.220+0.073−0.063R⊕ and orbits within its host star’s conservative habitable zone with a period of 37.42 days (Teq∼269 K). TOI-700 also hosts two small inner planets (Rb=1.044+0.065−0.063R⊕ & Rc=2.64+0.16−0.14R⊕) with periods of 9.98 and 16.05 days, respectively. Our Spitzer observations confirm the TESS detection of TOI-700 d and remove any remaining doubt that it is a genuine planet. We analyze the Spitzer light curve combined with the 11 sectors of TESS observations and a transit of TOI-700 c from the LCOGT network to determine the full system parameters. With an expected RV semi-amplitude of ∼80 cm/s, it may be possible to measure the mass of TOI-700 d using state-of-the-art radial velocity instruments.

Comments: 13 Pages, 3 Figures, 2 Tables, Submitted to the AAS Journals (12/22/2019), Some revisions from minor referee report

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)

Cite as: arXiv:2001.00954 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2001.00954v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

From: Joseph Rodriguez Jr. 

[v1] Fri, 3 Jan 2020 19:00:56 UTC (1,485 KB)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00954

Astrobiology