Astronomers discover a warm, Jupiter-sized exoplanet

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new, warm, Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbiting a dwarf star. The newly discovered alien world, called TOI-4127 b, is more than twice as large as Jupiter. The finding was reported in a paper published March 25 arXiv Prepress server.

TESS is surveying about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the goal of searching for transiting exoplanets. To date, it has identified more than 6,200 exoplanet candidates (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 3,031 have been confirmed so far.

A group of astronomers led by Arvind F. Gupta of Penn State University (PSU) has now confirmed another TOI observed by TESS. They report that a transit signal has been identified in the light curve of a late F-type dwarf star known as TOI-4127. The planetary nature of this signal has been confirmed by follow-up spectroscopic observations.

“In this work, we present the detection of the warm, eccentric Jupiter TOI-4127 b with TESS, and the confirmation and characterization of the exoplanet signal using the NEID and SOPHIE spectrometers,” the researchers write.

According to the paper, TOI-4127 b has a radius of approximately 1.1 Jupiter radii and a mass of 2.3 Jupiter masses, resulting in a density of approximately 2.17 g/cm.³. The planet orbits its host every 56.4 days, at a distance of about 0.31 AU from it, in a highly eccentric orbit – with an eccentricity of about 0.75. The equilibrium temperature of TOI-4127 b has been estimated to be about 605.1 K, so the planet has been classified as a “warm Jupiter”.

By analyzing TOI-4127 b’s parameters, the researchers concluded that the planet may be a “hot Jupiter” progenitor, but only if it had a pesky companion. The so-called hot Jupiter has similar characteristics to the largest planet in the solar system, with orbital periods of less than 10 days. These exoplanets have high surface temperatures, because they orbit their parent stars so closely.

“It is hypothesized that warm Jupiters might spend a small part of their lives on a highly skewed tidal migration path if they were subject to secular declination oscillations, through which they exchange angular momentum with far outliers to periodically reach higher eccentricities and tighter distances around the center than observed at the time.” present,” the paper’s authors explain.

In the case of the TOI-4127 system, the current oceanic separation of the newly discovered planet is too great for the highly eccentric tidal migration to deflect its orbit. Astronomers note that TOI-4127 b is unlikely to be a hot progenitor of Jupiter unless it is undergoing an exchange of angular momentum with an undetected outer companion. However, no evidence of additional bodies has yet been found in this system.

When it comes to parent star TOI-4127, it has a radius of about 1.3 solar radii and a mass of about 1.23 solar masses. The star is about 4.8 billion years old, has a metallicity of 0.14, and an effective temperature of 6096 K.

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