Search

Detecting planetary signatures in radial velocity time-series of young stars is challenging due to their inherently strong stellar activity. However, it is possible to learn information about the properties of the stellar signal by using activity indicators measured from the same stellar spectra used to extract radial velocities. In this manuscript, we present a reanalysis of spectroscopic HARPS data of the young star K2-233, which hosts three transiting planets. We perform a multidimensional Gaussian Process regression on the radial velocity and the activity indicators to characterise the planetary Doppler signals. We demonstrate, for the first time on a real dataset, that the use of a multidimensional Gaussian Process can boost the precision with which we measure the planetary signals compared to a one-dimensional Gaussian Process applied to the radial velocities alone. We measure the semi-amplitudes of K2-233 b, c, and d as 1.31(-0.74)(+0.81), 1.81(-0.67)(+0.71), and 2.72(-0.70)(+0.66) m/s, which translates into planetary masses of 2.4(-1.3)(+1.5), 4.6(-1.7)(+1.8), and 10.3(-2.6)(+2.4), respectively. These new mass measurements make K2-233 d a valuable target for transmission spectroscopy observations with JWST. K2-233 is the only young system with two detected inner planets below the radius valley and a third outer planet above it. This makes it an excellent target to perform comparative studies, to inform our theories of planet evolution, formation, migration, and atmospheric evolution., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets has revealed signatures of water vapor, aerosols, and alkali metals in a few dozen exoplanet atmospheres. However, these previous inferences with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes were hindered by the observations’ relatively narrow wavelength range and spectral resolving power, which precluded the unambiguous identification of other chemical species—in particular the primary carbon-bearing molecules. Here we report a broad-wavelength 0.5–5.5 μm atmospheric transmission spectrum of WASP-39 b, a 1200 K, roughly Saturn-mass, Jupiter-radius exoplanet, measured with JWST NIRSpec’s PRISM mode as part of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team program. We robustly detect multiple chemical species at high significance, including Na (19σ), H2O (33σ), CO2 (28σ), and CO (7σ). The non-detection of CH4, combined with a strong CO2 feature, favours atmospheric models with a super-Solar atmospheric metallicity. An unanticipated absorption feature at 4μm is best explained by SO2 (2.7σ), which could be a tracer of atmospheric photochemistry. These observations demonstrate JWST’s sensitivity to a rich diversity of exoplanet compositions and chemical processes.

Full list of authors: Turtelboom, Emma V.; Weiss, Lauren M.; Dressing, Courtney D.; Nowak, Grzegorz; Pallé, Enric; Beard, Corey; Blunt, Sarah; Brinkman, Casey; Chontos, Ashley; Claytor, Zachary R.; Dai, Fei; Dalba, Paul A.; Giacalone, Steven; Gonzales, Erica; Harada, Caleb K.; Hill, Michelle L.; Holcomb, Rae; Korth, Judith; Lubin, Jack; Masseron, Thomas; MacDougall, Mason; Mayo, Andrew W.; Močnik, Teo; Akana Murphy, Joseph M.; Polanski, Alex S.; Rice, Malena; Rubenzahl, Ryan A.; Scarsdale, Nicholas; Stassun, Keivan G.; Tyler, Dakotah B.; Zandt, Judah Van; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Deeg, Hans J.; Fulton, Benjamin; Gandolfi, Davide; Howard, Andrew W.; Huber, Dan; Isaacson, Howard; Kane, Stephen R.; Lam, Kristine W. F.; Luque, Rafael; Martín, Eduardo L.; Morello, Giuseppe; Orell-Miquel, Jaume; Petigura, Erik A.; Robertson, Paul; Roy, Arpita; Van Eylen, Vincent; Baker, David; Belinski, Alexander A.; Bieryla, Allyson; Ciardi, David R.; Collins, Karen A.; Cutting, Neil; Della-Rose, Devin J.; Ellingsen, Taylor B.; Furlan, E.; Gan, Tianjun; Gnilka, Crystal L.; Guerra, Pere; Howell, Steve B.; Jimenez, Mary; Latham, David W.; Larivière, Maude; Lester, Kathryn V.; Lillo-Box, Jorge; Luker, Lindy; Mann, Christopher R.; Plavchan, Peter P.; Safonov, Boris; Skinner, Brett; Strakhov, Ivan A.; Wittrock, Justin M.; Caldwell, Douglas A.; Essack, Zahra; Jenkins, Jon M.; Quintana, Elisa V.; Ricker, George R.; Vanderspek, Roland; Seager, S.; Winn, Joshua N.-- This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., Multiplanet systems are valuable arenas for investigating exoplanet architectures and comparing planetary siblings. TOI-1246 is one such system, with a moderately bright K dwarf (V = 11.6, K = 9.9) and four transiting sub-Neptunes identified by TESS with orbital periods of 4.31, 5.90, 18.66, and 37.92 days. We collected 130 radial velocity observations with Keck/HIRES and TNG/HARPS-N to measure planet masses. We refit the 14 sectors of TESS photometry to refine planet radii (2.97 ± 0.06 R⊕, 2.47 ± 0.08 R⊕, 3.46 ± 0.09 R⊕, and 3.72 ± 0.16 R⊕) and confirm the four planets. We find that TOI-1246 e is substantially more massive than the three inner planets (8.1 ± 1.1 M⊕, 8.8 ± 1.2 M⊕, 5.3 ± 1.7 M⊕, and 14.8 ± 2.3 M⊕). The two outer planets, TOI-1246 d and TOI-1246 e, lie near to the 2:1 resonance (Pe/Pd = 2.03) and exhibit transit-timing variations. TOI-1246 is one of the brightest four-planet systems, making it amenable for continued observations. It is one of only five systems with measured masses and radii for all four transiting planets. The planet densities range from 0.70 ± 0.24 to 3.21 ± 0.44 g cm−3, implying a range of bulk and atmospheric compositions. We also report a fifth planet candidate found in the RV data with a minimum mass of 25.6 ± 3.6 M⊕. This planet candidate is exterior to TOI-1246 e, with a candidate period of 93.8 days, and we discuss the implications if it is confirmed to be planetary in nature. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., We thank the time assignment committees of the University of California, the California Institute of Technology, NASA, and the University of Hawaii for supporting the TESS-Keck Survey with observing time at Keck Observatory. We thank NASA for funding associated with our Key Strategic Mission Support project. We gratefully acknowledge the efforts and dedication of the Keck Observatory staff for support of HIRES and remote observing. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are deeply grateful to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. We thank Ken and Gloria Levy, who supported the construction of the Levy Spectrometer on the Automated Planet Finder. We thank the University of California and Google for supporting Lick Observatory, and the UCO staff for their dedicated work scheduling and operating the telescopes of Lick Observatory. This paper is based on data collected by the TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. C.D. gratefully acknowledges support from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A.A.B., B.S.S., and I.A.S. acknowledge the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under the grant 075-15-2020-780(N13.1902.21.0039). J.K. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA; DNR 2020-00104). A.W.M. is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship grant No. DGE 1752814. J.M.A.M. is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant No. DGE-1842400. J.M.A.M. acknowledges the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program, which is funded by LSSTC, NSF Cybertraining grant No. 1829740, the Brinson Foundation, and the Moore Foundation; his participation in the program has benefited this work. C.K.H. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant No. DGE 2146752. M.R. is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant No. DGE-1752134. R.A.R. is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, grant No. DGE 1745301. P.D. is supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1903811. R.L. acknowledges financial support from the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). D.H. acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC20K0593, 80NSSC21K0652). T.M. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) through the Spanish State Research Agency, under the Severo Ochoa Program 2020-2023 (CEX2019-000920-S). K.W.F.L. acknowledges support by DFG grants RA714/14-1 within the DFG Schwerpunkt SPP 1992, "Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets."

This paper reports on the detailed characterisation of the K2-111 planetary system with K2, WASP, and ASAS-SN photometry as well as high-resolution spectroscopic data from HARPS-N and ESPRESSO. The host, K2-111, is confirmed to be a mildly evolved ($\log g=4.17$), iron-poor ([Fe/H]$=-0.46$), but alpha-enhanced ([$\alpha$/Fe]$=0.27$), chromospherically quiet, very old thick disc G2 star. A global fit, performed by using PyORBIT shows that the transiting planet, K2-111b, orbits with a period $P_b=5.3518\pm0.0004$ d, and has a planet radius of $1.82^{+0.11}_{-0.09}$ R$_\oplus$ and a mass of $5.29^{+0.76}_{-0.77}$ M$_\oplus$, resulting in a bulk density slightly lower than that of the Earth. The stellar chemical composition and the planet properties are consistent with K2-111b being a terrestrial planet with an iron core mass fraction lower than the Earth. We announce the existence of a second signal in the radial velocity data that we attribute to a non-transiting planet, K2-111c, with an orbital period of $15.6785\pm 0.0064$ days, orbiting in near-3:1 mean-motion resonance with the transiting planet, and a minimum planet mass of $11.3\pm1.1$ M$_\oplus$. Both planet signals are independently detected in the HARPS-N and ESPRESSO data when fitted separately. There are potentially more planets in this resonant system, but more well-sampled data are required to confirm their presence and physical parameters., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS on 28 Sept 2020. Paper is 18 pages with an additional 12 pages of supplementary material. Data is available at https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=J/MNRAS/499/5004

IC 4997 is a planetary nebula well known by its variability. We present high-resolution spectra of IC 4997 obtained in 1993, 2019, and 2020 that reveal changes in the Hα and [N » II] emission line profiles, which had never been reported for this object. The Hα P Cygni emission profile observed in 1993 changed to a single-peaked profile in 2019-2020, implying that the stellar wind has largely weakened. The very broad Hα emission wings narrowed by a factor of ∼2 between 1993 and 2019-2020, indicating that the efficiency of the Rayleigh-Raman scattering has noticeably decreased. A high-velocity [N » II] nebular component detected in 1993 is missing in 2019 and 2020, probably due to a decrease in its electron density. A correlation exists between the strength of the stellar wind and the episodic (∼50-60 yr) variation in the [O » III]λ4363/Hγ line intensity ratio, suggesting that an episodic, smoothly variable stellar wind is the main cause of the variability of IC 4997. Monitoring of that intensity ratio and of the Hα emission line profile in the coming years and new multiwavelength observations are key to unveiling the ongoing processes in IC 4997 and constraining the origin of the wind variability. © ESO 2022., We thank Calar Alto Observatory for allocation of director’s discretionary time to this programme. LFM is partially supported by MCIU grant AYA2017-84390-C2-1-R (co-funded by FEDER) and PID2020-114461GB-I00 of AEI (10.13039/501100011033), and acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). J.M.T. acknowledges partial support from the PID2020-117710GB-I00 grant funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. J.L.-B. acknowledges financial support received from “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) and from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Slodowska-Curie grant agreement No 847648, with fellowship code LCF/BQ/PI20/11760023. This research has also been partly funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) Projects No.ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R and No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”- Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC).

We present the discovery and characterization of a transiting sub-Neptune orbiting with a 16.20 day period around a nearby (28 pc) and bright(V=8.37) K0V star HD207897 (TOI-1611). This discovery is based on photometric measurements from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite(TESS) mission and radial velocity (RV) observations from the SOPHIE, Automated Planet Finder (APF) and HIRES high precision spectrographs. We used EXOFASTv2 for simultaneously modeling the parameters of the planet and its host star, combining photometric and RV data to determine the planetary system parameters. We show that the planet has a radius of 2.50+/-0.08 RE and a mass of either 14.4+/-1.6 ME or 15.9+/-1.6 ME with nearly equal probability; the two solutions correspond to two possibilities for the stellar activity period. Hence, the density is either 5.1+/-0.7 g cm^-3 or 5.5^{+0.8}_{-0.7} g cm^-3, making it one of the relatively rare dense sub-Neptunes. The existence of such a dense planet at only 0.12 AU from its host star is unusual in the currently observed sub-Neptune (2, Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables; accepted for publication in the A&A journal; comments welcome

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.-- Full list of authors: Espinoza, Néstor; Pallé, Enric; Kemmer, Jonas; Luque, Rafael; Caballero, José A.; Cifuentes, Carlos; Herrero, Enrique; Sánchez Béjar, Víctor J.; Stock, Stephan; Molaverdikhani, Karan; Morello, Giuseppe; Kossakowski, Diana; Schlecker, Martin; Amado, Pedro J.; Bluhm, Paz; Cortés-Contreras, Miriam; Henning, Thomas; Kreidberg, Laura; Kürster, Martin; Lafarga, Marina; Lodieu, Nicolas; Morales, Juan Carlos; Oshagh, Mahmoudreza; Passegger, Vera M.; Pavlov, Alexey; Quirrenbach, Andreas; Reffert, Sabine; Reiners, Ansgar; Ribas, Ignasi; Rodríguez, Eloy; López, Cristina Rodríguez; Schweitzer, Andreas; Trifonov, Trifon; Chaturvedi, Priyanka; Dreizler, Stefan; Jeffers, Sandra V.; Kaminski, Adrian; López-González, María José; Lillo-Box, Jorge; Montes, David; Nowak, Grzegorz; Pedraz, Santos; Vanaverbeke, Siegfried; Zapatero Osorio, Maria R.; Zechmeister, Mathias; Collins, Karen A.; Girardin, Eric; Guerra, Pere; Naves, Ramon; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Matthews, Elisabeth C.; Howell, Steve B.; Ciardi, David R.; Gonzales, Erica; Matson, Rachel A.; Beichman, Charles A.; Schlieder, Joshua E.; Barclay, Thomas; Vezie, Michael; Villaseñor, Jesus Noel; Daylan, Tansu; Mireies, Ismael; Dragomir, Diana; Twicken, Joseph D.; Jenkins, Jon; Winn, Joshua N.; Latham, David; Ricker, George; Seager, Sara., We report the discovery and characterization of TOI-1759 b, a temperate (400 K) sub-Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting the M dwarf TOI-1759 (TIC 408636441). TOI-1759 b was observed by TESS to transit in Sectors 16, 17, and 24, with only one transit observed per sector, creating an ambiguity regarding the orbital period of the planet candidate. Ground-based photometric observations, combined with radial-velocity measurements obtained with the CARMENES spectrograph, confirm an actual period of 18.85019 ± 0.00014 days. A joint analysis of all available photometry and radial velocities reveals a radius of 3.17 ± 0.10 R⊕ and a mass of 10.8 ± 1.5 M⊕. Combining this with the stellar properties derived for TOI-1759 (R⋆ = 0.597 ± 0.015 R⊙; M⋆ = 0.606 ± 0.020 M⊙; Teff = 4065 ± 51 K), we compute a transmission spectroscopic metric (TSM) value of over 80 for the planet, making it a good target for transmission spectroscopy studies. TOI-1759 b is among the top five temperate, small exoplanets (Teq < 500 K, Rp < 4 R⊕) with the highest TSM discovered to date. Two additional signals with periods of 80 days and >200 days seem to be present in our radial velocities. While our data suggest both could arise from stellar activity, the later signal's source and periodicity are hard to pinpoint given the ∼200 days baseline of our radial-velocity campaign with CARMENES. Longer baseline radial-velocity campaigns should be performed in order to unveil the true nature of this long-period signal. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciëncies de l'Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología, and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars," the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work was based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PGC2018-098153-B-C33, AYA2018-84089, PID2019-107061GB-C64, PID2019-110689RB-100, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, and BES-2017-080769, and the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "María de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019-000920-S), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), NASA (NNX17AG24G), and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA program. Data were partly collected with the 90 cm telescope at the Sierra Nevada Observatory (SNO) operated by the Instituto de Astrofí fica de Andalucí a (IAA, CSIC). We acknowledge the telescope operators from the Sierra Nevada Observatory for their support. G.M. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 895525. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products.

We present the bright (V$_{mag} = 9.12$), multi-planet system TOI-431, characterised with photometry and radial velocities. We estimate the stellar rotation period to be $30.5 \pm 0.7$ days using archival photometry and radial velocities. TOI-431b is a super-Earth with a period of 0.49 days, a radius of 1.28 $\pm$ 0.04 R$_{\oplus}$, a mass of $3.07 \pm 0.35$ M$_{\oplus}$, and a density of $8.0 \pm 1.0$ g cm$^{-3}$; TOI-431d is a sub-Neptune with a period of 12.46 days, a radius of $3.29 \pm 0.09$ R$_{\oplus}$, a mass of $9.90^{+1.53}_{-1.49}$ M$_{\oplus}$, and a density of $1.36 \pm 0.25$ g cm$^{-3}$. We find a third planet, TOI-431c, in the HARPS radial velocity data, but it is not seen to transit in the TESS light curves. It has an $M \sin i$ of $2.83^{+0.41}_{-0.34}$ M$_{\oplus}$, and a period of 4.85 days. TOI-431d likely has an extended atmosphere and is one of the most well-suited TESS discoveries for atmospheric characterisation, while the super-Earth TOI-431b may be a stripped core. These planets straddle the radius gap, presenting an interesting case-study for atmospheric evolution, and TOI-431b is a prime TESS discovery for the study of rocky planet phase curves., Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, 3 appendices, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present the first results of K2-OjOS, a collaborative project between professional and amateur astronomers primarily aimed to detect, characterize, and validate new extrasolar planets. For this work, 10 amateur astronomers looked for planetary signals by visually inspecting the 20 427 light curves of K2 campaign 18 (C18). They found 42 planet candidates, of which 18 are new detections and 24 had been detected in the overlapping C5 by previous works. We used archival photometric and spectroscopic observations, as well as new high-spatial resolution images in order to carry out a complete analysis of the candidates found, including a homogeneous characterization of the host stars, transit modelling, search for transit timing variations and statistical validation. As a result, we report four new planets (K2-355 b, K2-356 b, K2-357 b, and K2-358 b) and 14 planet candidates. Besides, we refine the transit ephemeris of the previously published planets and candidates by modelling C5, C16 (when available) and C18 photometric data jointly, largely improving the period and mid-transit time precision. Regarding individual systems, we highlight the new planet K2-356 b and candidate EPIC 211537087.02 being near a 2:1 period commensurability, the detection of significant TTVs in the bright star K2-184 (V = 10.35), the location of K2-103 b inside the habitable zone according to optimistic models, the detection of a new single transit in the known system K2-274, and the disposition reassignment of K2-120 b, which we consider as a planet candidate as the origin of the signal cannot be ascertained., Accepted for publication in MNRAS

In this paper we report the discovery of TOI-220 $b$, a new sub-Neptune detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and confirmed by radial velocity follow-up observations with the HARPS spectrograph. Based on the combined analysis of TESS transit photometry and high precision radial velocity measurements we estimate a planetary mass of 13.8 $\pm$ 1.0 M$_{Earth}$ and radius of 3.03 $\pm$ 0.15 R$_{Earth}$, implying a bulk density of 2.73 $\pm$ 0.47 $\textrm{g cm}^{-3}$. TOI-220 $b$ orbits a relative bright (V=10.4) and old (10.1$\pm$1.4 Gyr) K dwarf star with a period of $\sim$10.69 d. Thus, TOI-220 $b$ is a new warm sub-Neptune with very precise mass and radius determinations. A Bayesian analysis of the TOI-220 $b$ internal structure indicates that due to the strong irradiation it receives, the low density of this planet could be explained with a steam atmosphere in radiative-convective equilibrium and a supercritical water layer on top of a differentiated interior made of a silicate mantle and a small iron core., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

The direct detection of new extrasolar planets from high-precision photometry data is commonly based on the observation of the transit signal of the planet as it passes in front of its star. Close-in planets, however, leave additional imprints in the light curve even if they do not transit. These are the so-called phase curve variations that include ellipsoidal, reflection and beaming effects. In Millholland & Laughlin (2017), the authors scrutinized the Kepler database looking for these phase variations from non-transiting planets. They found 60 candidates whose signals were compatible with planetary companions. In this paper, we perform a ground-based follow-up of a sub-sample of these systems with the aim of confirming and characterizing these planets and thus validating the detection technique. We used the CAFE and HERMES instruments to monitor the radial velocity of ten non-transiting planet candidates along their orbits. We additionally used AstraLux to obtain high-resolution images of some of these candidates to discard blended binaries that contaminate the Kepler light curves by mimicking planetary signals. Among the ten systems, we confirm three new hot-Jupiters (KIC8121913 b, KIC10068024 b, and KIC5479689 b) with masses in the range 0.5-2 M$_{\rm Jup}$ and set mass constraints within the planetary regime for the other three candidates (KIC8026887b, KIC5878307 b, and KIC11362225 b), thus strongly suggestive of their planetary nature. For the first time, we validate the technique of detecting non-transiting planets via their phase curve variations. We present the new planetary systems and their properties. We find good agreement between the RV-derived masses and the photometric masses in all cases except KIC8121913 b, which shows a significantly lower mass derived from the ellipsoidal modulations than from beaming and radial velocity data., Accepted for publication in A&A. 17 pages, 8 figures, 14 tables

We report the discovery of WTS-2 b, an unusually close-in 1.02-day hot Jupiter (Mp=1.12MJ, Rp=1.363RJ) orbiting a K2V star, which has a possible gravitationally-bound M-dwarf companion at 0.6 arcsec separation contributing ~20 percent of the total flux in the observed J-band light curve. The planet is only 1.5 times the separation from its host star at which it would be destroyed by Roche lobe overflow, and has a predicted remaining lifetime of just ~40 Myr, assuming a tidal dissipation quality factor of Q'*=10^6. Q'* is a key factor in determining how frictional processes within a host star affect the orbital evolution of its companion giant planets, but it is currently poorly constrained by observations. We calculate that the orbital decay of WTS-2 b would correspond to a shift in its transit arrival time of T_shift~17 seconds after 15 years assuming Q'*=10^6. A shift less than this would place a direct observational constraint on the lower limit of Q'* in this system. We also report a correction to the previously published expected T_shift for WASP-18 b, finding that T_shift=356 seconds after 10 years for Q'*=10^6, which is much larger than the estimated 28 seconds quoted in WASP-18 b discovery paper. We attempted to constrain Q'* via a study of the entire population of known transiting hot Jupiters, but our results were inconclusive, requiring a more detailed treatment of transit survey sensitivities at long periods. We conclude that the most informative and straight-forward constraints on Q'* will be obtained by direct observational measurements of the shift in transit arrival times in individual hot Jupiter systems. We show that this is achievable across the mass spectrum of exoplanet host stars within a decade, and will directly probe the effects of stellar interior structure on tidal dissipation., 21 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Full list of authors: Bluhm, P.; Pallé, E.; Molaverdikhani, K.; Kemmer, J.; Hatzes, A. P.; Kossakowski, D.; Stock, S.; Caballero, J. A.; Lillo-Box, J.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Soto, M. G.; Amado, P. J.; Brown, P.; Cadieux, C.; Cloutier, R.; Collins, K. A.; Collins, K. I.; Cortés-Contreras, M.; Doyon, R.; Dreizler, S.; Espinoza, N.; Fukui, A.; González-Álvarez, E.; Henning, Th.; Horne, K.; Jeffers, S. V.; Jenkins, J. M.; Jensen, E. L. N.; Kaminski, A.; Kielkopf, J. F.; Kusakabe, N.; Kürster, M.; Lafrenière, D.; Luque, R.; Murgas, F.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Narita, N.; Passegger, V. M.; Quirrenbach, A.; Schöfer, P.; Reffert, S.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I.; Ricker, G. R.; Seager, S.; Schweitzer, A.; Schwarz, R. P.; Tamura, M.; Trifonov, T.; Vanderspek, R.; Winn, J.; Zechmeister, M.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R., Dynamical histories of planetary systems, as well as the atmospheric evolution of highly irradiated planets, can be studied by characterizing the ultra-short-period planet population, which the TESS mission is particularly well suited to discover. Here, we report on the follow-up of a transit signal detected in the TESS sector 19 photometric time series of the M3.0 V star TOI-1685 (2MASS J04342248+4302148). We confirm the planetary nature of the transit signal, which has a period of Pb = 0.6691403-0.0000021+0.0000023 d, using precise radial velocity measurements taken with the CARMENES spectrograph. From the joint photometry and radial velocity analysis, we estimate the following parameters for TOI-1685 b: a mass of Mb = 3.78-0.63+0.63 M? , a radius of Rb = 1.70-0.07+0.07 R? , which together result in a bulk density of ρb = 4.21-0.82+0.95 g cm-3, and an equilibrium temperature of Teq = 1069-16+16 K. TOI-1685 b is the least dense ultra-short-period planet around an M dwarf known to date. TOI-1685 b is also one of the hottest transiting super-Earth planets with accurate dynamical mass measurements, which makes it a particularly attractive target for thermal emission spectroscopy. Additionally, we report with moderate evidence an additional non-transiting planet candidate in the system, TOI-1685 [c], which has an orbital period of Pc = 9.02-0.12+0.10 d. © ESO 2021., CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Cen tro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB- C5[1:4]/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, PGC2018-098153-B-C33, and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astro biología (MDM-2017-0737), the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme,“la Caixa” Foundation (100010434), European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agree ment No. 847 648 (LCF/BQ/PI20/11760023), a University Research Support Grant from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, JSPS KAKENHI (JP15H02063, JP18H01265, JP18H05439, JP18H05442, and JP22000005), JST PRESTO (JPMJPR1775), UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/R000824/1), and NASA (NNX17AG24G) This article is based on obser vations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by ABC, at Telescopio Carlos Sánchez operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide, with the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic, financed by Université de Montréal, Université Laval, the National Sciences and Engineer ing Council of Canada, the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la Nature et les technologies, and the Canada Economic Development program, and with the LCOGT network. LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program , which is funded by NSF. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronau tics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This research also made use of AstroImageJ, and TAPIR, and the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.

We report the discovery of HD 110113 b (TOI-755.01), a transiting mini-Neptune exoplanet on a 2.5-day orbit around the solar-analogue HD 110113 (Teff = 5730K). Using TESS photometry and HARPS radial velocities gathered by the NCORES program, we find HD 110113 b has a radius of $2.05\pm0.12$ $R_\oplus$ and a mass of $4.55\pm0.62$ $M_\oplus$. The resulting density of $2.90^{+0.75}_{-0.59}$ g cm^{-3} is significantly lower than would be expected from a pure-rock world; therefore, HD 110113 b must be a mini-Neptune with a significant volatile atmosphere. The high incident flux places it within the so-called radius valley; however, HD 110113 b was able to hold onto a substantial (0.1-1\%) H-He atmosphere over its $\sim4$ Gyr lifetime. Through a novel simultaneous gaussian process fit to multiple activity indicators, we were also able to fit for the strong stellar rotation signal with period $20.8\pm1.2$ d from the RVs and confirm an additional non-transiting planet with a mass of $10.5\pm1.2$ $M_\oplus$ and a period of $6.744^{+0.008}_{-0.009}$ d., Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication at MNRAS. HARPS RVs available at https://dace.unige.ch/radialVelocities/?pattern=HD110113

Leleu, A., et al., Determining the architecture of multi-planetary systems is one of the cornerstones of understanding planet formation and evolution. Resonant systems are especially important as the fragility of their orbital configuration ensures that no significant scattering or collisional event has taken place since the earliest formation phase when the parent protoplanetary disc was still present. In this context, TOI-178 has been the subject of particular attention since the first TESS observations hinted at the possible presence of a near 2:3:3 resonant chain. Here we report the results of observations from CHEOPS, ESPRESSO, NGTS, and SPECULOOS with the aim of deciphering the peculiar orbital architecture of the system. We show that TOI-178 harbours at least six planets in the super-Earth to mini-Neptune regimes, with radii ranging from 1.152to 2.87Earth radii and periods of 1.91, 3.24, 6.56, 9.96, 15.23, and 20.71 days. All planets but the innermost one form a 2:4:6:9:12 chain of Laplace resonances, and the planetary densities show important variations from planet to planet, jumping from 1.02to 0.177times the Earth's density between planets c and d. Using Bayesian interior structure retrieval models, we show that the amount of gas in the planets does not vary in a monotonous way, contrary to what one would expect from simple formation and evolution models and unlike other known systems in a chain of Laplace resonances. The brightness of TOI-178 (H = 8.76 mag, J = 9.37 mag, V = 11.95 mag) allows for a precise characterisation of its orbital architecture as well as of the physical nature of the six presently known transiting planets it harbours. The peculiar orbital configuration and the diversity in average density among the planets in the system will enable the study of interior planetary structures and atmospheric evolution, providing important clues on the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes., The authors acknowledge support from the Swiss NCCR PlanetS and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Y.A. and M.J.H. acknowledge the support of the Swiss National Fund under grant 200020_172746. A.C.C. and T.W. acknowledge support from STFC consolidated grant number ST/M001296/1. This work was granted access to the HPC resources of MesoPSL financed by the Region Ile de France and the project Equip@Meso (reference ANR-10-EQPX-29-01) of the programme Investissements d’Avenir supervised by the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche. SH acknowledges CNES funding through the grant 837319. Based on data collected under the NGTS project at the ESO La Silla Paranal Observatory. The NGTS facility is operated by the consortium institutes with support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) project ST/M001962/1. The Belgian participation to CHEOPS has been supported by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of the PRODEX Program, and by the University of Liège through an ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. V.A. acknowledges the support from FCT through Investigador FCT contract nr. IF/00650/2015/CP1273/CT0001. We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grants ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, PGC2018-098153-B-C33, PGC2018-098153-B-C31, ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R, MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”- Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. The MOC activities have been supported by the ESA contract No. 4000124370. S.C.C.B. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contracts nr. IF/01312/2014/CP1215/CT0004. X.B., S.C., D.G., M.F. and J.L. acknowledge their role as ESA-appointed CHEOPS science team members. ABr was supported by the SNSA. A.C. acknowledges support by CFisUC projects (UIDB/04564/2020 and UIDP/04564/2020), GRAVITY (PTDC/FIS-AST/7002/2020), ENGAGE SKA (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022217), and PHOBOS (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029932), funded by COMPETE 2020 and FCT, Portugal. This work was supported by FCT - Fundaçãopara a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE2020 - Programa OperacionalCompetitividade e Internacionalização by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020; PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 032113; PTDC/FIS-AST/28953/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953; PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987. O.D.S.D. is supported in the form of work contract (DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0004) funded by national funds through FCT. B.-O.D. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P2-190080). M.F. and C.M.P. gratefully acknowledgethe support of the Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18). D.G. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CRT foundation under Grant No. 2018.2323 “Gaseousor rocky? Unveiling the nature of small worlds”. E.G. gratefully acknowledges support from the David and Claudia Harding Foundation in the form of a WintonExoplanet Fellowship. M.G. is an F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. J.I.G.H. acknowledges financial support from Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the 2013 Ramón y Cajal programme RYC-2013-14875. J.I.G.H., A.S.M., R.R., and C.A.P. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MICINN AYA2017-86389-P. A.S.M. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the 2019 Juan de la Cierva Programme. MNG ackowledges support from the MIT Kavli Institute as a Juan Carlos Torres Fellow. J.H. acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Fund under grant 200020_172746. KGI is the ESA CHEOPS Project Scientist and is responsible for the ESA CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme.She does not participate in, or contribute to, the definition of the Guaranteed Time Programme of the CHEOPS mission through which observations described in this paper have been taken, nor to any aspect of target selection forthe programme. J.S.J. acknowledges support by FONDECYT grant 1201371, and partial support from CONICYT project Basal AFB-170002. A.J. acknowledges support from ANID - Millennium Science Initiative - ICN12_009 and from FONDECYT project 1171208. P.M. acknowledges support from STFC research grant number ST/M001040/1. N.J.N is supported by the contract and exploratory project IF/00852/2015, and projects UID/FIS/04434/2019, PTDC/FIS-OUT/29048/2017, COMPETE2020: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987 & FCT: PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017. N.J.N is supported by the contract and exploratory project IF/00852/2015, and project PTDC/FIS-OUT/29048/2017. This work was also partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (PI Queloz, grant number 327127). Acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grant PGC2018-098153-B- C33, as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. S.G.S. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contract nr. CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC). This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This project has been supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) grants GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00003, K-119517, K-125015, and the City of Szombathely under Agreement No. 67.177-21/2016. This research received funding from the MERAC foundation, from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 803193/ BEBOP, and from the Science and Technology Facilites Council (STFC, grant no ST/S00193X/1). V.V.G. is an F.R.S-FNRS Research Associate. J.I.V. acknowledges support of CONICYT-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional-21191829. M. R. Z. O. acknowledges financial support from projects AYA2016-79425-C3-2-P and PID2019-109522GB-C51 from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

Aims. We report on ESPRESSO high-resolution transmission spectroscopic observations of two primary transits of the highly-irradiated, ultra-hot Jupiter-size planet WASP-76b. We investigate the presence of several key atomic and molecular features of interest that may reveal the atmospheric properties of the planet. Methods. We extracted two transmission spectra of WASP-76b with R approx 140,000 using a procedure that allowed us to process the full ESPRESSO wavelength range (3800-7880 A) simultaneously. We observed that at a high signal-to-noise ratio, the continuum of ESPRESSO spectra shows wiggles that are likely caused by an interference pattern outside the spectrograph. To search for the planetary features, we visually analysed the extracted transmission spectra and cross-correlated the observations against theoretical spectra of different atomic and molecular species. Results. The following atomic features are detected: Li I, Na I, Mg I, Ca II, Mn I, K I, and Fe I. All are detected with a confidence level between 9.2 sigma (Na I) and 2.8 sigma (Mg I). We did not detect the following species: Ti I, Cr I, Ni I, TiO, VO, and ZrO. We impose the following 1 sigma upper limits on their detectability: 60, 77, 122, 6, 8, and 8 ppm, respectively. Conclusions. We report the detection of Li I on WASP-76b for the first time. In addition, we found the presence of Na I and Fe I as previously reported in the literature. We show that the procedure employed in this work can detect features down to the level of ~ 0.1 % in the transmission spectrum and ~ 10 ppm by means of a cross-correlation method. We discuss the presence of neutral and singly ionised features in the atmosphere of WASP-76b., 20 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Context: Open clusters (OCs) are widely used as test particles to investigate a variety of astrophysical phenomena, from stellar evolution to Galactic evolution. Gaia and the complementary massive spectroscopic surveys are providing an unprecedented wealth of information about these systems. Aims: The Open Cluster Chemical Abundances from Spanish Observatories (OCCASO) survey aims to complement all this work by determining OCs accurate radial velocities and chemical abundances from high-resolution, R$\geq$60\,000, spectra. Methods: Radial velocities have been obtained by cross-correlating the observed spectra with a library of synthetic spectra which covers from early M to A spectral types. Results: We provide radial velocities for 336 stars, including several Gaia Benchmark Stars and objects belonging to 51 open clusters. The internal uncertainties of the derived radial velocities go from 10 m/s to 21 m/s as a function of the instrumental configuration used. The derived radial velocities, together with the Gaia proper motions, have been used to investigate the cluster membership of the observed stars. After this careful membership analysis, we obtain average velocities for 47 open clusters. To our knowledge, this is the first radial velocity determination for 5 of these clusters. Finally, the radial velocities, proper motions, distances and ages have been used to investigate the kinematics of the observed clusters and in the integration of their orbits., Comment: 27 pages, accepted for publication in A&A

Context. Transiting sub-Neptune-type planets, with radii approximately between 2 and 4 R⊕, are of particular interest as their study allows us to gain insight into the formation and evolution of a class of planets that are not found in our Solar System. Aims. We exploit the extreme radial velocity (RV) precision of the ultra-stable echelle spectrograph ESPRESSO on the VLT to unveil the physical properties of the transiting sub-Neptune TOI-130 b, uncovered by the TESS mission orbiting the nearby, bright, late F-type star HD 5278 (TOI-130) with a period of Pb = 14.3 days. Methods. We used 43 ESPRESSO high-resolution spectra and broad-band photometry information to derive accurate stellar atmospheric and physical parameters of HD 5278. We exploited the TESS light curve and spectroscopic diagnostics to gauge the impact of stellar activity on the ESPRESSO RVs. We performed separate as well as joint analyses of the TESS photometry and the ESPRESSO RVs using fully Bayesian frameworks to determine the system parameters. Results. Based on the ESPRESSO spectra, the updated stellar parameters of HD 5278 are Teff = 6203 ± 64 K, log g = 4.50 ± 0.11 dex, [Fe/H] = −0.12 ± 0.04 dex, M⋆ = 1.126−0.035+0.036 M⊙, and R⋆ = 1.194−0.016+0.017 R⊙. We determine HD 5278 b’s mass and radius to be Mb = 7.8−1.4+1.5 M⊕ and Rb = 2.45 ± 0.05R⊕. The derived mean density, ϱb = 2.9−0.5+0.6 g cm−3, is consistent with the bulk composition of a sub-Neptune with a substantial (~ 30%) water mass fraction and with a gas envelope comprising ~17% of the measured radius. Given the host brightness and irradiation levels, HD 5278 b is one of the best targetsorbiting G-F primaries for follow-up atmospheric characterization measurements with HST and JWST. We discover a second, non-transiting companion in the system, with a period of Pc = 40.87−0.17+0.18 days and a minimum mass of Mc sin ic = 18.4−1.9+1.8 M⊕. We study emerging trends in parameters space (e.g., mass, radius, stellar insolation, and mean density) of the growing population of transiting sub-Neptunes, and provide statistical evidence for a low occurrence of close-in, 10 − 15M⊕ companions around G-F primaries with Teff ≳ 5500 K. The authors acknowledge the ESPRESSO project team for its effort and dedication in building the ESPRESSO instrument. This work has received financial support from the ASI-INAF agreement no. 2018-16-HH.0. M.D. acknowledges financial support from the FP7-SPACE Project ETAEARTH (GA No. 313014). A.S. We gratefully acknowledges support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contract 2018-24-HH.0. The INAF authors acknowledge financial support of the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research with PRIN 201278X4FL and the Progetti Premiali funding scheme.to acknowledge the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for supporting research with ESPRESSO through the SNSF grants no. 140649, 152721, and 166227. The ESPRESSO Instrument Project was partially funded through SNSF's FLARE Programme for large infrastructures. This work has been carried out in part within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This work was supported by FCT -Funda cao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE2020 -Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionaliza cao by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020; PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032113; PTDC/FIS-AST/28953/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953; PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987; PTDC/FIS-OUT/29048/2017 & IF/00852/2015. S.C.C.B. acknowledges support from FCT through contract nr. IF/01312/2014/CP1215/CT0004. S.G.S acknowledges the support from FCT through Investigator FCT contract nr. CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project Four Aces, grant agreement no. 724427). V.A. acknowledges the support from FCT through Investigator FCT contract nr. IF/00650/2015/CP1273/CT0001. Y.A. and J.H. acknowledge the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for supporting research through the SNSF grant 200 020_192038. J.I.G.H. acknowledges financial support from Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the 2013 Ramon y Cajal programme RYC-2013-14 875. J.I.G.H., A.S.M., R.R., and C.A.P. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MICINN AYA2017-86 389-P. A.S.M. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the 2019 Juan de la Cierva Programme. R.A. is a Trottier Postdoctoral Fellow and acknowledges support from the Trottier Family Foundation. This work was supported in part through a grant from FRQNT. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This publication makes use of The Data & Analysis Center for Exoplanets (DACE), which is a facility based at the University of Geneva (CH) dedicated to extrasolar planets data visualization, exchange and analysis. DACE is a platform of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, federating the expertise in Exoplanet research. The DACE platform is available at https://dace.unige.ch.This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST).; We acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. Peerreview

Using the Hamilton Echelle Spectrograph at Lick Observatory, we have obtained precise radial velocities (RVs) of a sample of 373 G- and K-giant stars over more than 12 years, leading to the discovery of several single and multiple planetary systems. The RVs of the long-period (~53 years) spectroscopic binary $\epsilon$ Cyg (HIP 102488) are found to exhibit additional regular variations with a much shorter period (~291 days). We intend to improve the orbital solution of the $\epsilon$ Cyg system and attempt to identify the cause of the nearly periodic shorter period variations, which might be due to an additional substellar companion. We used precise RV measurements of the K-giant star $\epsilon$ Cyg from Lick Observatory, in combination with a large set of RVs collected more recently with the SONG telescope, as well as archival data sets. Our Keplerian model to the RVs characterizes the orbit of the spectroscopic binary to higher precision than achieved previously, resulting in a semi-major axis of $a = 15.8 \mathrm{AU}$, an eccentricity of $e = 0.93$, and a minimum mass of the secondary of $m \sin i = 0.265 M_\odot$. Additional short-period RV variations closely resemble the signal of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting the evolved primary component with a period of $291 \mathrm{d}$, but the period and amplitude of the putative orbit change strongly over time. Furthermore, in our stability analysis of the system, no stable orbits could be found in a large region around the best fit. Both of these findings deem a planetary cause of the RV variations unlikely. Most of the investigated alternative scenarios, such as an hierarchical triple or stellar spots, also fail to explain the observed variability convincingly. Due to its very eccentric binary orbit, it seems possible, however, that $\epsilon$ Cyg could be an extreme example of a heartbeat system., Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, accepted to A&A

ESPRESSO is the new high-resolution spectrograph of ESO's Very-Large Telescope (VLT). It was designed for ultra-high radial-velocity precision and extreme spectral fidelity with the aim of performing exoplanet research and fundamental astrophysical experiments with unprecedented precision and accuracy. It is able to observe with any of the four Unit Telescopes (UT) of the VLT at a spectral resolving power of 140,000 or 190,000 over the 378.2 to 788.7 nm wavelength range, or with all UTs together, turning the VLT into a 16-m diameter equivalent telescope in terms of collecting area, while still providing a resolving power of 70,000. We provide a general description of the ESPRESSO instrument, report on the actual on-sky performance, and present our Guaranteed-Time Observation (GTO) program with its first results. ESPRESSO was installed on the Paranal Observatory in fall 2017. Commissioning (on-sky testing) was conducted between December 2017 and September 2018. The instrument saw its official start of operations on October 1st, 2018, but improvements to the instrument and re-commissioning runs were conducted until July 2019. The measured overall optical throughput of ESPRESSO at 550 nm and a seeing of 0.65 arcsec exceeds the 10% mark under nominal astro-climatic conditions. We demonstrate a radial-velocity precision of better than 25 cm/s during one night and 50 cm/s over several months. These values being limited by photon noise and stellar jitter show that the performanceis compatible with an instrumental precision of 10 cm/s. No difference has been measured across the UTs neither in throughput nor RV precision. The combination of the large collecting telescope area with the efficiency and the exquisite spectral fidelity of ESPRESSO opens a new parameter space in RV measurements, the study of planetary atmospheres, fundamental constants, stellar characterisation and many other fields., 26 pages, 28 figures

Full list of authors: Soto, M. G.; Anglada-Escudé, G.; Dreizler, S.; Molaverdikhani, K.; Kemmer, J.; Rodríguez-López, C.; Lillo-Box, J.; Pallé, E.; Espinoza, N.; Caballero, J. A.; Quirrenbach, A.; Ribas, I.; Reiners, A.; Narita, N.; Hirano, T.; Amado, P. J.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Bluhm, P.; Burke, C. J.; Caldwell, D. A.; Charbonneau, D.; Cloutier, R.; Collins, K. A.; Cortés-Contreras, M.; Girardin, E.; Guerra, P.; Harakawa, H.; Hatzes, A. P.; Irwin, J.; Jenkins, J. M.; Jensen, E.; Kawauchi, K.; Kotani, T.; Kudo, T.; Kunimoto, M.; Kuzuhara, M.; Latham, D. W.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Mori, M.; Nelson, R. P.; Omiya, M.; Pedraz, S.; Passegger, V. M.; Rackham, B. V.; Rudat, A.; Schlieder, J. E.; Schöfer, P.; Schweitzer, A.; Selezneva, A.; Stockdale, C.; Tamura, M.; Trifonov, T.; Vanderspek, R.; Watanabe, D., One of the main objectives of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission is the discovery of small rocky planets around relatively bright nearby stars. Here, we report the discovery and characterization of the transiting super-Earth planet orbiting LHS 1478 (TOI-1640). The star is an inactive red dwarf (J ∼ 9.6 mag and spectral type m3 V) with mass and radius estimates of 0.20 ± 0.01M· and 0.25 ± 0.01R· , respectively, and an effective temperature of 3381 ± 54 K. It was observed by TESS in four sectors. These data revealed a transit-like feature with a period of 1.949 days. We combined the TESS data with three ground-based transit measurements, 57 radial velocity (RV) measurements from CARMENES, and 13 RV measurements from IRD, determining that the signal is produced by a planet with a mass of 2.33-0.20+0.20 Mâ• and a radius of 1.24-0.05+0.05 Ra• . The resulting bulk density of this planet is 6.67 g cm-3, which is consistent with a rocky planet with an Fe-and MgSiO3-dominated composition. Although the planet would be too hot to sustain liquid water on its surface (its equilibrium temperature is about ∼595 K, suggesting aVenus-like atmosphere), spectroscopic metrics based on the capabilities of the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope and the fact that the host star is rather inactive indicate that this is one of the most favorable known rocky exoplanets for atmospheric characterization. © 2021 ESO., CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and iedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This paper included data collected by the TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. This work made use of observations from the LCOGT network. LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP), which is funded by the National Science Foundation. We acknowledge financial support from STFC grants ST/P000592/1 and ST/T000341/1, NASA grant NNX17AG24G, the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4]/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, PGC2018-098153-B-C3[1,3] and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows Grant (JP20J21872), JSPS KAKENHI Grant (22000005, JP15H02063,JP18H01265, JP18H05439, JP18H05442, JP19K14783), JST PRESTO Grant (JPMJPR1775), and University Research Support Grant from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Despite swift progress in the characterisation of exoplanet atmospheres in composition and structure, the study of atmospheric dynamics has not progressed at the same speed. While theoretical models have been developed to describe the lower layers of the atmosphere and, disconnected, the exosphere, little is known about the intermediate layers up to the thermosphere. We aim to provide a clearer picture of atmospheric dynamics for the class of ultra hot Jupiters, highly-irradiated gas giants, on the example of WASP-76~b. We analysed two datasets jointly, obtained with the HARPS and ESPRESSO spectrographs, to interpret the resolved planetary sodium doublet. We then applied an updated version of the MERC code, with added planetary rotation, also provides the possibility to model the latitude dependence of the wind patterns. We retrieve the highest Bayesian evidence for an isothermal atmosphere, interpreted as a mean temperature of $3389\pm227$ K, a uniform day-to-night side wind of $5.5^{+1.4}_{-2.0}\,$ km/s in the lower atmosphere with a vertical wind in the upper atmosphere of $22.7^{+4.9}_{-4.1}\,$ km/s, switching atmospheric wind patterns at $10^{-3}$ bar above the reference surface pressure ($10$ bar). Our results for WASP-76~b are compatible with previous studies of the lower atmospheric dynamics of WASP-76~b and other ultra hot Jupiters. They highlight the need for vertical winds in the intermediate atmosphere above the layers probed by global circulation model studies to explain the line broadening of the sodium doublet in this planet. This work demonstrates the capability of exploiting the resolved spectral line shapes to observationally constrain possible wind patterns in exoplanet atmospheres, an invaluable input to more sophisticated 3D atmospheric models in the future., 17 pages, 20 figures, submitted to A&A 15.Feb.2021, accepted for publication in A&A 20.Jul.2021

The CARMENES instrument consists of two cross-dispersed ´echelle spectrographs, which together cover the wavelength range from 5,200 to 17,100 ˚A. During its first five years of operation at the 3.5 m telescope on Calar Alto, Spain, it has been used for a radial-velocity survey of 365 M dwarfs, for follow-up radial-velocity observations of transiting exoplanets, and for spectroscopic studies of exoplanet atmospheres during transits. The CARMENES data have also yielded a wealth of information on the fundamental parameters and activity of M dwarfs. We provide an overview of the scientific results from the main CARMENES survey in the years 2016 to 2020.

Context. LHS 1140 is an M dwarf known to host two transiting planets at orbital periods of 3.77 and 24.7 days. They were detected with HARPS and Spitzer. The external planet (LHS 1140 b) is a rocky super-Earth that is located in the middle of the habitable zone of this low-mass star. All these properties place this system at the forefront of the habitable exoplanet exploration, and it therefore constitutes a relevant case for further astrobiological studies, including atmospheric observations. Aims. We further characterize this system by improving the physical and orbital properties of the known planets, search for additional planetary-mass components in the system, and explore the possibility of co-orbitals. Methods. We collected 113 new high-precision radial velocity observations with ESPRESSO over a 1.5-yr time span with an average photon-noise precision of 1.07 m s-1. We performed an extensive analysis of the HARPS and ESPRESSO datasets and also analyzed them together with the new TESS photometry. We analyzed the Bayesian evidence of several models with different numbers of planets and orbital configurations. Results. We significantly improve our knowledge of the properties of the known planets LHS 1140 b (Pb ∼ 24.7 days) and LHS 1140 c (Pc ∼ 3.77 days). We determine new masses with a precision of 6% for LHS 1140 b (6.48 ± 0.46 Mpdbl) and 9% for LHS 1140 c (mc = 1.78 ± 0.17 Mpdbl). This reduces the uncertainties relative to previously published values by half. Although both planets have Earth-like bulk compositions, the internal structure analysis suggests that LHS 1140 b might be iron-enriched and LHS 1140 c might be a true Earth twin. In both cases, the water content is compatible to a maximum fraction of 10-12% in mass, which is equivalent to a deep ocean layer of 779 ± 650 km for the habitable-zone planet LHS 1140 b. Our results also provide evidence for a new planet candidate in the system (md = 4.8 ± 1.1Mpdbl) on a 78.9-day orbital period, which is detected through three independent methods. The analysis also allows us to discard other planets above 0.5 Mpdbl for periods shorter than 10 days and above 2 Mpdbl for periods up to one year. Finally, our co-orbital analysis discards co-orbital planets in the tadpole and horseshoe configurations of LHS 1140 b down to 1 Mpdbl with a 95% confidence level (twice better than with the previous HARPS dataset). Indications for a possible co-orbital signal in LHS 1140 c are detected in both radial velocity (alternatively explained by a high eccentricity) and photometric data (alternatively explained by systematics), however. Conclusions. The new precise measurements of the planet properties of the two transiting planets in LHS 1140 as well as the detection of the planet candidate LHS 1140 d make this system a key target for atmospheric studies of rocky worlds at different stellar irradiations., With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737)

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, is currently carrying out an all-sky search for small planets transiting bright stars. In the first year of the TESS survey, steady progress was made in achieving the mission's primary science goal of establishing bulk densities for 50 planets smaller than Neptune. During that year, TESS's observations were focused on the southern ecliptic hemisphere, resulting in the discovery of three mini-Neptunes orbiting the star TOI-125, a V=11.0 K0 dwarf. We present intensive HARPS radial velocity observations, yielding precise mass measurements for TOI-125b, TOI-125c and TOI-125d. TOI-125b has an orbital period of 4.65 days, a radius of $2.726 \pm 0.075 ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$, a mass of $ 9.50 \pm 0.88 ~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$ and is near the 2:1 mean motion resonance with TOI-125c at 9.15 days. TOI-125c has a similar radius of $2.759 \pm 0.10 ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$ and a mass of $ 6.63 \pm 0.99 ~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$, being the puffiest of the three planets. TOI-125d, has an orbital period of 19.98 days and a radius of $2.93 \pm 0.17~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$ and mass $13.6 \pm 1.2 ~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$. For TOI-125b and TOI-125d we find unusual high eccentricities of $0.19\pm 0.04$ and $0.17^{+0.08}_{-0.06}$, respectively. Our analysis also provides upper mass limits for the two low-SNR planet candidates in the system; for TOI-125.04 ($R_P=1.36 ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$, $P=$0.53 days) we find a $2\sigma$ upper mass limit of $1.6~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$, whereas TOI-125.05 ( $R_P=4.2^{+2.4}_{-1.4} ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$, $P=$ 13.28 days) is unlikely a viable planet candidate with upper mass limit $2.7~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$. We discuss the internal structure of the three confirmed planets, as well as dynamical stability and system architecture for this intriguing exoplanet system., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Context. It has become clear in recent years that binarity plays a crucial role in many aspects of planetary nebulae (PNe), particularly with regard to the striking morphologies they exhibit. To date, there are nearly 60 known binary central stars of PNe (bCSPNe). However, both theory and observation indicate that this figure represents only the tip of the iceberg, with the Galactic PN population hosting orders of magnitude more stars. Aims. We are involved in a search for new bCSPNe with the aim of enhancing the statistical validation of the key role of binarity in the formation and shaping of PNe. New discoveries of bCSPNe and their characterization carry important implications not only for understanding PN evolution, but also for studying binary evolution and the common-envelope phase, which is still poorly understood. Methods. We used data from the TESS satellite to search for variability in the eight CSPNe that belong to the two-minute cadence of preselected targets in Cycle 1, with their available pipeline-extracted light curves. We identified strong periodicities and analysed them in the context of the binary scenario. Results. All the CSPNe but one (Abell 15) show clear signs of periodic variability in TESS. The cause of this variability can be attributed to different effects, some of them requiring the presence of a companion star. We find simple sinusoidal modulations in several of the systems, compatible with irradiation effects. In addition, two of the central stars (PG 1034+001 and NGC 5189) also show photometric variations due to ellipsoidal variations and other signs of variability that are probably caused by star spots or relativistic Doppler-beaming. The case of the well-studied Helix Nebula is of particular interest; here we constructed a series of binary models to explain the modulations we see in the light curve. We find that the variability constrains the possible companion to be very low-mass main-sequence star or sub-stellar object. We also identify, in substantial detail, the individual pulsation frequencies of NGC 246. © ESO 2020., Acknowledgements. We thank our anonymous referee for their useful comments that have improved the interpretation and discussion of the data. AA acknowledges support from Government of Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) through postdoctoral Grant “Atracción de Talento Investigador” 2018-T2/TIC-11697. JLB and SBF acknowledge support from the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) through projects No. ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R and No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu” – Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC). DJ acknowledges support from the State Research Agency (AEI) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) under grant AYA2017-83383-P. DJ also acknowledges support under grant P/308614 financed by funds transferred from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, charged to the General State Budgets and with funds transferred from the General Budgets of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands by the Ministry of Economy, Industry, Trade and Knowledge. LFM acknowledges partial support by grant AYA2017-84390-C2-1-R, co-funded with FEDER funds, and financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Insti-tuto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). Authors are very grateful to Cristina Rodríguez López for guiding us with the analysis of RWT 152 and NGC 246. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at the CDS, Strasbourg (France), Aladin, NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services, and the Spanish Virtual Observatory (http://svo.cab. inta-csic.es) supported from the Spanish MICINN/FEDER through grant AyA2017-84089. This publication makes use of data collected by TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. We acknowledge the use of pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This paper makes use of data products from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescope.

Toledo-Padrón, B. et al., Context. An accurate characterization of the known exoplanet population is key to understanding the origin and evolution of planetary systems. Determining true planetary masses through the radial velocity (RV) method is expected to experience a great improvement thanks to the availability of ultra-stable echelle spectrographs. Aims. We took advantage of the extreme precision of the new-generation echelle spectrograph ESPRESSO to characterize the transiting planetary system orbiting the G2V star K2-38 located at 194 pc from the Sun with V 11.4. This system is particularly interesting because it could contain the densest planet detected to date. Methods. We carried out a photometric analysis of the available K2 photometric light curve of this star to measure the radius of its two known planets, K2-38b and K2-38c, with Pb = 4.01593 ± 0.00050 d and Pc = 10.56103 ± 0.00090 d, respectively. Using 43 ESPRESSO high-precision RV measurements taken over the course of 8 months along with the 14 previously published HIRES RV measurements, we modeled the orbits of the two planets through a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis, significantly improving their mass measurements. Results. Using ESPRESSO spectra, we derived the stellar parameters, Teff = 5731 ± 66, log g = 4.38 ± 0.11 dex, and [Fe/H] = 0.26 ± 0.05 dex, and thus the mass and radius of K2-38, Ma = 1.03-0.02+0.04 MaS and Ra = 1.06-0.06+0.09 RaS. We determine new values for the planetary properties of both planets. We characterize K2-38b as a super-Earth with RP = 1.54 ± 0.14 RaS and Mp = 7.3-1.0+1.1 MaS, and K2-38c as a sub-Neptune with RP = 2.29 ± 0.26 RaS and Mp = 8.3-1.3+1.3 MaS. Combining the radius and mass measurements, we derived a mean density of ρp = 11.0-2.8+4.1 g cm-3 for K2-38b and ρp = 3.8-1.1+1.8 g cm-3 for K2-38c, confirming K2-38b as one of the densest planets known to date. Conclusions. The best description for the composition of K2-38b comes from an iron-rich Mercury-like model, while K2-38c is better described by a rocky-model with H2 envelope. The maximum collision stripping boundary shows how giant impacts could be the cause for the high density of K2-38b. The irradiation received by each planet places them on opposite sides of the radius valley. We find evidence of a long-period signal in the RV time-series whose origin could be linked to a 0.25-3 MJ planet or stellar activity., With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737)

All authors: Bluhm, P.; Luque, R.; Espinoza, N.; Pallé, E.; Caballero, J. A.; Dreizler, S.; Livingston, J. H.; Mathur, S.; Quirrenbach, A.; Stock, S.; Van Eylen, V.; Nowak, G.; López, E. D.; Csizmadia, Sz.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Schöfer, P.; Lillo-Box, J.; Oshagh, M.; González-Álvarez, E.; Amado, P. J.; Barrado, D.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Cale, B.; Chaturvedi, P.; Cifuentes, C.; Cochran, W. D.; Collins, K. A.; Collins, K. I.; Cortés-Contreras, M.; Díez Alonso, E.; El Mufti, M.; Ercolino, A.; Fridlund, M.; Gaidos, E.; García, R. A.; Georgieva, I.; González-Cuesta, L.; Guerra, P.; Hatzes, A. P.; Henning, Th.; Herrero, E.; Hidalgo, D.; Isopi, G.; Jeffers, S. V.; Jenkins, J. M.; Jensen, E. L. N.; Kábath, P.; Kaminski, A.; Kemmer, J.; Korth, J.; Kossakowski, D.; Kürster, M.; Lafarga, M.; Mallia, F.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Morales-Calderón, M.; Murgas, F.; Narita, N.; Passegger, V. M.; Pedraz, S.; Persson, C. M.; Plavchan, P.; Rauer, H.; Redfield, S.; Reffert, S.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I.; Ricker, G. R.; Rodríguez-López, C.; Santos, A. R. G.; Seager, S.; Schlecker, M.; Schweitzer, A.; Shan, Y.; Soto, M. G.; Subjak, J.; Tal-Or, L.; Trifonov, T.; Vanaverbeke, S.; Vanderspek, R.; Wittrock, J.; Zechmeister, M.; Zohrabi, F., We report the confirmation of a transiting planet around the bright weakly active M0.5 V star TOI-1235 (TYC 4384-1735-1, V ≈ 11.5 mag), whose transit signal was detected in the photometric time series of sectors 14, 20, and 21 of the TESS space mission. We confirm the planetary nature of the transit signal, which has a period of 3.44 d, by using precise RV measurements with the CARMENES, HARPS-N, and iSHELL spectrographs, supplemented by high-resolution imaging and ground-based photometry. A comparison of the properties derived for TOI-1235 b with theoretical models reveals that the planet has a rocky composition, with a bulk density slightly higher than that of Earth. In particular, we measure a mass of Mp = 5.9 ± 0.6 M⊕ and a radius of Rp = 1.69 ± 0.08 R⊕ , which together result in a density of ρp = 6.7- 1.1+ 1.3 g cm-3. When compared with other well-characterized exoplanetary systems, the particular combination of planetary radius and mass places our discovery in the radius gap, which is a transition region between rocky planets and planets with significant atmospheric envelopes. A few examples of planets occupying the radius gap are known to date. While the exact location of the radius gap for M dwarfs is still a matter of debate, our results constrain it to be located at around 1.7 R⊕ or larger at the insolation levels received by TOI-1235 b (~60 S⊕ ). This makes it an extremely interesting object for further studies of planet formation and atmospheric evolution. © ESO 2020., CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Institut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. We acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through projects RE 281/32-1, RE 1664/14-1, RE 2694/4-1, and RA714/14-1, PA525/18-1, PA525/19-1 within the Schwerpunkt SPP 1992, the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and the European FEDER/ERF funds through projects PGC2018-098153-B-C31, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3P, AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P, RYC-2015-17697, and BES-2017-082610, the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "Maria de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiologia (MDM-2017-0737), the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant 713673, the Centre national d'etudes spatiales through grants PLATO and GOLF, the Czech Academy of Sciences through grant LTT20015, NASA through grants NNX17AF27G and NNX17AG24G, JSPS KAKENHI through grants JP18H01265 and JP18H05439, JST PRESTO through grant JPMJPR1775, the Fundacion Bancaria "la Caixa" through grant INPhINIT LCF/BQ/IN17/11620033, and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. NESSI was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and the NASA Ames Research Center and built at the Ames Research Center. The authors are honored to be permitted to conduct observations on Iolkam Du'ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain within the Tohono O'odham Nation with particular significance to the Tohono O'odham people. This work made use of observations from the LCOGT network and the following software: astrasens, AstroImageJ, Banzai, batman, caracal, emcee, juliet, serval, TESS Transit Finder, tpfplotter, Yabi, and the python packages astropy, lightkurve, matplotlib, and numpy. We thank the SuperWASP team and J. Sanz-Forcada for sharing unpublished information with us. Special thanks to Ismael Pessa for all their support through this work.

Damasso, M. et al., Context. The bright star π Men was chosen as the first target for a radial velocity follow-up to test the performance of ESPRESSO, the new high-resolution spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The star hosts a multi-planet system (a transiting 4 M· planet at ∼0.07 au and a sub-stellar companion on a ∼2100-day eccentric orbit), which is particularly suitable for a precise multi-technique characterization. Aims. With the new ESPRESSO observations, which cover a time span of 200 days, we aim to improve the precision and accuracy of the planet parameters and search for additional low-mass companions. We also take advantage of the new photometric transits of π Men c observed by TESS over a time span that overlaps with that of the ESPRESSO follow-up campaign. Methods. We analysed the enlarged spectroscopic and photometric datasets and compared the results to those in the literature. We further characterized the system by means of absolute astrometry with HIPPARCOS and Gaia. We used the high-resolution spectra of ESPRESSO for an independent determination of the stellar fundamental parameters. Results. We present a precise characterization of the planetary system around π Men. The ESPRESSO radial velocities alone (37 nightly binned data with typical uncertainty of 10 cm s-1) allow for a precise retrieval of the Doppler signal induced by π Men c. The residuals show a root mean square of 1.2 m s-1, which is half that of the HARPS data; based on the residuals, we put limits on the presence of additional low-mass planets (e.g. we can exclude companions with a minimum mass less than ∼2 M· within the orbit of π Men c). We improve the ephemeris of π Men c using 18 additional TESS transits, and, in combination with the astrometric measurements, we determine the inclination of the orbital plane of π Men b with high precision (ib =45.8-1.1+1.4 deg). This leads to the precise measurement of its absolute mass mb =14.1-0.4+0.5 MJup, indicating that π Men b can be classified as a brown dwarf. Conclusions. The π Men system represents a nice example of the extreme precision radial velocities that can be obtained with ESPRESSO for bright targets. Our determination of the 3D architecture of the π Men planetary system and the high relative misalignment of the planetary orbital planes put constraints on and challenge the theories of the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems. The accurate measurement of the mass of π Men b contributes to make the brown dwarf desert a bit greener., With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737)

The Calar Alto Secondary Eclipse study was a program dedicated to observe secondary eclipses in the near-IR of two known close-orbiting exoplanets around K-dwarfs: WASP-10b and Qatar-1b. Such observations reveal hints on the orbital configuration of the system and on the thermal emission of the exoplanet, which allows the study of the brightness temperature of its atmosphere. The observations were performed at the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain). We used the OMEGA2000 instrument (Ks band) at the 3.5m telescope. The data was acquired with the telescope strongly defocused. The differential light curve was corrected from systematic effects using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique. The final light curve was fitted using an occultation model to find the eclipse depth and a possible phase shift by performing a MCMC analysis. The observations have revealed a secondary eclipse of WASP-10b with depth of 0.137%, and a depth of 0.196% for Qatar-1b. The observed phase offset from expected mid-eclipse was of −0.0028 for WASP-10b, and of −0.0079 for Qatar-1b. These measured offsets led to a value for |ecosω| of 0.0044 for the WASP-10b system, leading to a derived eccentricity which was too small to be of any significance. For Qatar-1b, we have derived a |ecosω| of 0.0123, however, this last result needs to be confirmed with more data. The estimated Ks-band brightness temperatures are of 1647 K and 1885 K for WASP-10b and Qatar-1b, respectively. We also found an empirical correlation between the (R′HK) activity index of planet hosts and the Ks-band brightness temperature of exoplanets, considering a small number of systems.

Despite the existence of co-orbital bodies in the solar system, and the prediction of the formation of co-orbital planets by planetary system formation models, no co-orbital exoplanets (also called trojans) have been detected thus far. Here we study the signature of co-orbital exoplanets in transit surveys when two planet candidates in the system orbit the star with similar periods. Such a pair of candidates could be discarded as false positives because they are not Hill-stable. However, horseshoe or long-libration-period tadpole co-orbital configurations can explain such period similarity. This degeneracy can be solved by considering the transit timing variations (TTVs) of each planet. We subsequently focus on the three-planet-candidate system TOI-178: the two outer candidates of that system have similar orbital periods and were found to have an angular separation close to π∕3 during the TESS observation of sector 2. Based on the announced orbits, the long-term stability of the system requires the two close-period planets to be co-orbital. Our independent detrending and transit search recover and slightly favour the three orbits close to a 3:2:2 resonant chain found by the TESS pipeline, although we cannot exclude an alias that would put the system close to a 4:3:2 configuration. We then analyse the co-orbital scenario in more detail, and show that despite the influence of an inner planet just outside the 2:3 MMR, this potential co-orbital system could be stable on a gigayear time-scale for a variety of planetary masses, either on a trojan or a horseshoe orbit. We predict that large TTVs should arise in such a configuration with a period of several hundred days. We then show how the mass of each planet can be retrieved from these TTVs.

The detection of low-mass transiting exoplanets in multiple systems brings new constraints to planetary formation and evolution processes and challenges the current planet formation theories. Nevertheless, only a mere fraction of the small planets detected by Kepler and K2 have precise mass measurements, which are mandatory to constrain their composition. We aim to characterise the planets that orbit the relatively bright star K2-138. This system is dynamically particular as it presents the longest chain known to date of planets close to the 3:2 resonance. We obtained 215 HARPS spectra from which we derived the radial-velocity variations of K2-138. Via a joint Bayesian analysis of both the K2 photometry and HARPS radial-velocities (RVs), we constrained the parameters of the six planets in orbit. The masses of the four inner planets, from b to e, are 3.1, 6.3, 7.9, and 13.0 M⊕ with a precision of 34, 20, 18, and 15%, respectively. The bulk densities are 4.9, 2.8, 3.2, and 1.8 g cm-3, ranging from Earth to Neptune-like values. For planets f and g, we report upper limits. Finally, we predict transit timing variations of the order two to six minutes from the masses derived. Given its peculiar dynamics, K2-138 is an ideal target for transit timing variation (TTV) measurements from space with the upcoming CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) to study this highly-packed system and compare TTV and RV masses. Full Table A.3 is only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/631/A90

We report the discovery of the super-Earth K2-265 b detected with K2 photometry. The planet orbits a bright (V_mag = 11.1) star of spectral type G8V with a period of 2.37 days. We obtained high-precision follow-up radial velocity measurements from HARPS, and the joint Bayesian analysis showed that K2-265 b has a radius of 1.71 +/- 0.11 R_earth and a mass of 6.54 +/- 0.84 M_earth, corresponding to a bulk density of 7.1 +/- 1.8 g/cm^3 . Composition analysis of the planet reveals an Earth-like, rocky interior, with a rock mass fraction of 80%. The short orbital period and small radius of the planet puts it below the lower limit of the photoevaporation gap, where the envelope of the planet could have eroded due to strong stellar irradiation, leaving behind an exposed core. Knowledge of the planet core composition allows us to infer the possible formation and evolution mechanism responsible for its current physical parameters., 14 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A

Context The study of exoplanet atmospheres is essential for understanding the formation, evolution, and composition of exoplanets. The transmission spectroscopy technique is playing a significant role in this domain. In particular, the combination of state-of-The-Art spectrographs at low-And high-spectral resolution is key to our understanding of atmospheric structure and composition. Aims. We observed two transits of the close-in sub-Saturn-mass planet, WASP-127b, with ESPRESSO in the frame of the Guaranteed Time Observations Consortium. We aim to use these transit observations to study the system architecture and the exoplanet atmosphere simultaneously. Methods. We used the Reloaded Rossiter-McLaughlin technique to measure the projected obliquity λ and the projected rotational velocity veq sin(i∗). We extracted the high-resolution transmission spectrum of the planet to study atomic lines. We also proposed a new cross-correlation framework to search for molecular species and we applied it to water vapor. Results. The planet is orbiting its slowly rotating host star (veq sin(i∗) = 0.53-0.05+0.07 km s-1) on a retrograde misaligned orbit (λ =-128.41-5.46+5.60 °). We detected the sodium line core at the 9-σ confidence level with an excess absorption of 0.34 ± 0.04%, a blueshift of 2.74 ± 0.79 km s-1, and a full width at half maximum of 15.18 ± 1.75 km s-1. However, we did not detect the presence of other atomic species but set upper limits of only a few scale heights. Finally, we put a 3-σ upper limit on the average depth of the 1600 strongest water lines at equilibrium temperature in the visible band of 38 ppm. This constrains the cloud-deck pressure between 0.3 and 0.5 mbar by combining our data with low-resolution data in the near-infrared and models computed for this planet. Conclusions. WASP-127b, with an age of about 10 Gyr, is an unexpected exoplanet by its orbital architecture but also by the small extension of its sodium atmosphere (~7 scale heights). ESPRESSO allows us to take a step forward in the detection of weak signals, thus bringing strong constraints on the presence of clouds in exoplanet atmospheres. The framework proposed in this work can be applied to search for molecular species and study cloud-decks in other exoplanets., With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737)

Context. The β Pictoris moving group is one of the most well-known young associations in the solar neighbourhood and several members are known to host circumstellar discs, planets, and comets. Measuring its age precisely is essential to the study of several astrophysical processes, such as planet formation and disc evolution, which are strongly age-dependent. Aims. We aim to determine a precise and accurate dynamical traceback age for the β Pictoris moving group. Methods. Our sample combines the extremely precise Gaia DR2 astrometry with ground-based radial velocities measured in an homogeneous manner. We use an updated version of our algorithm to determine dynamical ages. The new approach takes into account a robust estimate of the spatial and kinematic covariance matrices of the association to improve the sample selection process and to perform the traceback analysis. Results. We estimate a dynamical age of 18.5-2.4+2.0 Myr for the β Pictoris moving group. We investigated the spatial substructure of the association at the time of birth and we propose the existence of a core of stars that is more concentrated. We also provide precise radial velocity measurements for 81 members of β Pic, including ten stars with the first determinations of their radial velocities. Conclusions. Our dynamical traceback age is three times more precise than previous traceback age estimates and, more importantly, for the first time it reconciles the traceback age with the most recent estimates of other dynamical, lithium depletion boundaries and isochronal ages. This has been possible thanks to the excellent astrometric and spectroscopic precisions, the homogeneity of our sample, and the detailed analysis of binaries and membership., This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 682903, P.I. H. Bouy), and from the French State in the framework of the “Investments for the future” Program, IdEx Bordeaux, reference ANR-10-IDEX-03-02. This research has been funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) Projects No.ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R and No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”- Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC). This work was supported by the MINECO (Spanish Ministry of Economy) through grant RTI2018-095076-B-C21 (MINECO/FEDER, UE). TA has been funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No.745617.

We report the discovery and characterisation of a super-Earth and a sub-Neptune transiting the bright (K = 8:8), quiet, and nearby (37 pc) M3V dwarf TOI-1266. We validate the planetary nature of TOI-1266 b and c using four sectors of TESS photometry and data from the newly-commissioned 1-m SAINT-EX telescope located in San Pedro Mártir (México). We also include additional groundbased follow-up photometry as well as high-resolution spectroscopy and high-angular imaging observations. The inner, larger planet has a radius of R = 2:37+0:16 -0:12 R and an orbital period of 10.9 days. The outer, smaller planet has a radius of R = 1:56+0:15 -0:13 R on an 18.8-day orbit. The data are found to be consistent with circular, co-planar and stable orbits that are weakly influenced by the 2:1 mean motion resonance. Our TTV analysis of the combined dataset enables model-independent constraints on the masses and eccentricities of the planets. We find planetary masses of Mp = 13:5+11:0 -9:0 M (, Embassy of Mexico in Bern, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigacion e Innovacion Tecnologica (PAPIIT) Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico IN-107518, DGAPA, Australian Research Council, Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS FRFC 2.5.594.09, Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF) - University of Liege, Spanish public funds for research ESP2017-87676-2-2 RYC-2012-09913, Spanish Government, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA, Baja California, Mexico - Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) MDM-2017-0737, Unidad de Excelencia "Maria de Maeztu"- Centro de Astrobiologia (INTA-CSIC), Junta de Andalucía, European Research Council (ERC) 336480, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) 80NSSC18K1585 80NSSC19K0379, National Science Foundation (NSF) AST-1717000, Antoine de Saint-Exupery Youth Foundation