Engineering topics

Aylin Garcia Soto

Publications and source records attributed to Aylin Garcia Soto.

2 records

NASA NTRS2019

An Eccentric Massive Jupiter Orbiting a Subgiant on a 9.5-day Period Discovered in the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Full Frame Images

We report the discovery of TOI-172 b from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, a massive hot Jupiter transiting a slightly evolved G star with a 9.48-day orbital period. This is the first planet to be confirmed from analysis of only the TESS full frame images, because the host star was not chosen as a two-minute cadence target. From a global analysis of the TESS photometry and follow-up observations carried out by the TESS Follow-up Observing Program Working Group, TOI-172 (TIC 29857954) is a slightly evolved star with an effective temperature of T(eff) = 5645 ± 50 K, a mass of M(⋆) =1.128(sub -0.061, sup +0.065) M(☉), radius of R(⋆) =1.777(sub -0.044, sup +0.047) R(☉), a surface gravity of log g(⋆) =3.993(sub -0.028, sup +0.027), and an age of 7.4(sub -1.5, sup +1.6) Gyr. Its planetary companion (TOI-172 b) has a radius of R(P) =0.965(sub -0.029, sup +0.032) R(J), a mass of M(P) =5.42(sub -0.20, sup +0.22) M(J), and is on an eccentric orbit (e=0.3806(sub -0.0090, sup +0.0093)). TOI-172 b is one of the few known massive giant planets on a highly eccentric short-period orbit. Future study of the atmosphere of this planet and its system architecture offer opportunities to understand the formation and evolution of similar systems.

Joseph E. Rodriguez↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The TESS Mission Target Selection Procedure

We describe the target selection procedure by which stars are selected for 2 minute and 20 s observations by TESS. We first list the technical requirements of the TESS instrument and ground systems processing that limit the total number of target slots. We then describe algorithms used by the TESS Payload Operation Center (POC) to merge candidate targets requested by the various TESS mission elements (the Target Selection Working Group, TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortium, and Guest Investigator office). Lastly, we summarize the properties of the observed TESS targets over the two-year primary TESS mission. We find that the POC target selection algorithm results in 2.1–3.4 times as many observed targets as target slots allocated for each mission element. We also find that the sky distribution of observed targets is different from the sky distributions of candidate targets due to technical constraints that require a relatively even distribution of targets across the TESS fields of view. We caution researchers exploring statistical analyses of TESS planet-host stars that the population of observed targets cannot be characterized by any simple set of criteria applied to the properties of the input Candidate Target Lists.

Michael Fausnaugh↗