The First Habitable Zone Earth-sized Planet from TESS. I: Validation of the TOI-700 System
Emily A. Gilbert, Thomas Barclay, Joshua E. Schlieder, Elisa V. Quintana, Benjamin J. Hord, Veselin B. Kostov, Eric D. Lopez, Jason F. Rowe, Kelsey Hoffman, Lucianne M. Walkowicz, Michele L. Silverstein, Joseph E. Rodriguez, Andrew Vanderburg, Gabrielle Suissa, Vladimir S. Airapetian, Matthew S. Clement, Sean N. Raymond, Andrew W. Mann, Ethan Kruse, Jack J. Lissauer, Knicole D. Colón, Ravi kumar Kopparapu, Laura Kreidberg, Sebastian Zieba, Karen A. Collins, Samuel N. Quinn, Steve B. Howell, Carl Ziegler, Eliot Halley Vrijmoet, Fred C. Adams, Giada N. Arney, Patricia T. Boyd, Jonathan Brande, Christopher J. Burke, Luca Cacciapuoti, Quadry Chance, Jessie L. Christiansen, Giovanni Covone, Tansu Daylan, Danielle Dineen, Courtney D. Dressing, Zahra Essack, Thomas J. Fauchez, Brianna Galgano, Alex R. Howe, Lisa Kaltenegger, Stephen R. Kane, Christopher Lam, Eve J. Lee, Nikole K. Lewis, Sarah E. Logsdon, Avi M. Mandell, Teresa Monsue, Fergal Mullally, Susan E. Mullally, Rishi Paudel, Daria Pidhorodetska, Peter Plavchan, Naylynn Tañón Reyes, Stephen A. Rinehart, Bárbara Rojas-Ayala, Jeffrey C. Smith, Keivan G. Stassun, Peter Tenenbaum, Laura D. Vega, Geronimo L. Villanueva, Eric T. Wolf, Allison Youngblood, George R. Ricker, Roland K. Vanderspek, David W. Latham, Sara Seager, Joshua N. Winn, Jon M. Jenkins, Gáspár Á. Bakos, César Briceño, David R. Ciardi, Ryan Cloutier, Dennis M. Conti, Andrew Couperus, Mario Di Sora, Nora L. Eisner, Mark E. Everett, Tianjun Gan, Joel D. Hartman, Todd Henry, Giovanni Isopi, Wei-Chun Jao, Eric L. N. Jensen, Nicholas Law, Franco Mallia, Rachel A. Matson, Benjamin J. Shappee, Mackenna Lee Wood, Jennifer G. Winters
(Submitted on 3 Jan 2020)
We present the discovery and validation of a three-planet system orbiting the nearby (31.1 pc) M2 dwarf star TOI-700 (TIC 150428135). TOI-700 lies in the TESS continuous viewing zone in the Southern Ecliptic Hemisphere; observations spanning 11 sectors reveal three planets with radii ranging from 1 R⊕ to 2.6 R⊕ and orbital periods ranging from 9.98 to 37.43 days. Ground-based follow-up combined with diagnostic vetting and validation tests enable us to rule out common astrophysical false-positive scenarios and validate the system of planets. The outermost planet, TOI-700 d, has a radius of 1.19±0.11 R⊕ and resides in the conservative habitable zone of its host star, where it receives a flux from its star that is approximately 86% of the Earth’s insolation. In contrast to some other low-mass stars that host Earth-sized planets in their habitable zones, TOI-700 exhibits low levels of stellar activity, presenting a valuable opportunity to study potentially-rocky planets over a wide range of conditions affecting atmospheric escape. While atmospheric characterization of TOI-700 d with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be challenging, the larger sub-Neptune, TOI-700 c (R = 2.63 R⊕), will be an excellent target for JWST and beyond. TESS is scheduled to return to the Southern Hemisphere and observe TOI-700 for an additional 11 sectors in its extended mission, which should provide further constraints on the known planet parameters and searches for additional planets and transit timing variations in the system.
Comments: 29 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables, submitted to AAS Journals
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2001.00952 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2001.00952v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Emily Gilbert
[v1] Fri, 3 Jan 2020 19:00:23 UTC (10,176 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00952
Astrobiology
