JWST has ushered in an era of unprecedented ability to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres. While there are over 5000 confirmed planets, more than 4000 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) planet candidates are still unconfirmed and many of the best planets for atmospheric characterization may remain to be identified. We present a sample of TESS planets and planet candidates that we identify as "best-in-class" for transmission and emission spectroscopy with JWST. These targets are sorted into bins across equilibrium temperature Teq and planetary radius Rp and are ranked by a transmission and an emission spectroscopy metric (TSM and ESM, respectively) within each bin. We perform cuts for expected signal size and stellar brightness to remove suboptimal targets for JWST. Of the 194 targets in the resulting sample, 103 are unconfirmed TESS planet candidates, also known as TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). We perform vetting and statistical validation analyses on these 103 targets to determine which are likely planets and which are likely false positives, incorporating ground-based follow-up from the TESS Follow-up Observation Program to aid the vetting and validation process. We statistically validate 18 TOIs, marginally validate 31 TOIs to varying levels of confidence, deem 29 TOIs likely false positives, and leave the dispositions for four TOIs as inconclusive. Twenty-one of the 103 TOIs were confirmed independently over the course of our analysis. We intend for this work to serve as a community resource and motivate formal confirmation and mass measurements of each validated planet. We encourage more detailed analysis of individual targets by the community.
Identification of the Top TESS Objects of Interest for Atmospheric Characterization of Transiting Exoplanets with JWST
- Creators
- Hord, Benjamin J.
- Kempton, Eliza M.-R.
- Evans-Soma, Thomas M.
- Latham, David W.
- Ciardi, David R.
- Dragomir, Diana
- Colón, Knicole D.
- Ross, Gabrielle
- Vanderburg, Andrew
- de Beurs, Zoe L.
- Collins, Karen A.
- Watkins, Cristilyn N.
- Bean, Jacob
- Cowan, Nicolas B.
- Daylan, Tansu
- Morley, Caroline V.
- Ih, Jegug
- Baker, David
- Barkaoui, Khalid
- Batalha, Natalie M.
- Behmard, Aida
- Belinski, Alexander
- Benkhaldoun, Zouhair
- Benni, Paul
- Bernacki, Krzysztof
- Bieryla, Allyson
- Binnenfeld, Avraham
- Bosch-Cabot, Pau
- Bouchy, François
- Bozza, Valerio
- Brahm, Rafael
- Buchhave, Lars A.
- Calkins, Michael
- Chontos, Ashley
- Clark, Catherine A.
- Cloutier, Ryan
- Cointepas, Marion
- Collins, Kevin I.
- Conti, Dennis M.
- Crossfield, Ian J. M.
- Dai, Fei
- de Leon, Jerome P.
- Dransfield, Georgina
- Dressing, Courtney
- Dustor, Adam
- Esquerdo, Gilbert
- Evans, Phil
- Fajardo-Acosta, Sergio B.
- Fiołka, Jerzy
- Forés-Toribio, Raquel
- Frasca, Antonio
- Fukui, Akihiko
- Fulton, Benjamin
- Furlan, Elise
- Gan, Tianjun
- Gandolfi, Davide
- Ghachoui, Mourad
- Giacalone, Steven
- Gilbert, Emily A.
- Gillon, Michaël
- Girardin, Eric
- Gonzales, Erica
- Grau Horta, Ferran
- Gregorio, Joao
- Greklek-McKeon, Michael
- Guerra, Pere
- Hartman, J. D.
- Hellier, Coel
- Helm, Ian
- Hełminiak, Krzysztof G.
- Henning, Thomas
- Hill, Michelle L.
- Horne, Keith
- Howard, Andrew W.1
- Howell, Steve B.
- Huber, Daniel
- Isopi, Giovanni
- Jehin, Emmanuel
- Jenkins, Jon M.
- Jensen, Eric L. N.
- Johnson, Marshall C.
- Jordán, Andrés
- Kane, Stephen R.
- Kielkopf, John F.
- Krushinsky, Vadim
- Lasota, Sławomir
- Lee, Elena
- Lewin, Pablo
- Livingston, John H.
- Lubin, Jack
- Lund, Michael B.
- Mallia, Franco
- Mann, Christopher R.
- Marino, Giuseppi
- Maslennikova, Nataliia
- Massey, Bob
- Matson, Rachel
- Matthews, Elisabeth
- Mayo, Andrew W.
- Mazeh, Tsevi
- McLeod, Kim K.
- Michaels, Edward J.
- Močnik, Teo
- Mori, Mayuko
- Mraz, Georgia
- Muñoz, Jose A.
- Narita, Norio
- Natarajan, Krupa
- Dyregaard Nielsen, Louise
- Osborn, Hugh
- Palle, Enric
- Panahi, Aviad
- Papini, Riccardo
- Plavchan, Peter
- Polanski, Alex S.
- Popowicz, Adam
- Pozuelos, Francisco J.
- Quinn, Samuel N.
- Radford, Don J.
- Reed, Phillip A.
- Relles, Howard M.
- Rice, Malena
- Robertson, Paul
- Rodriguez, Joseph E.
- Rosenthal, Lee J.
- Rubenzahl, Ryan A.
- Schanche, Nicole
- Schlieder, Joshua
- Schwarz, Richard P.
- Sefako, Ramotholo
- Shporer, Avi
- Sozzetti, Alessandro
- Srdoc, Gregor
- Stockdale, Chris
- Tarasenkov, Alexander
- Tan, Thiam-Guan
- Timmermans, Mathilde
- Ting, Eric B.
- Van Zandt, Judah
- Vignes, JP
- Waite, Ian
- Watanabe, Noriharu
- Weiss, Lauren M.
- Wittrock, Justin
- Zhou, George
- Ziegler, Carl
- Zucker, Shay
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
We thank T. Komacek, D. Richardson, A. Boss, and C. Hartzell for their helpful discussion of this work.
Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program (ExoFOP) website (NExScI 2022), which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.
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 paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) and produced by the Science Processing Operations Center (SPOC) at NASA Ames Research Center. This research effort made use of systematic error-corrected (PDCSAP) photometry. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by 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.
Some/all of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The specific observations analyzed can be accessed via 10.17909/rd5r-m387.
This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. Part of the LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP). MSIP is funded by NSF.
This paper is based on observations made with the MuSCAT3 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center and under financial support by JSPS KAKENHI (grant No. JP18H05439) and JST PRESTO (grant No. JPMJPR1775), at Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, HI, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory.
This paper makes use of observations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center, at TCS operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide.
This paper makes use of data from the MEarth Project, which is a collaboration between Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The MEarth Project acknowledges funding from the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. AST-0807690, AST-1109468, AST-1616624 and AST-1004488 (Alan T. Waterman Award), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant No. 80NSSC18K0476 issued through the XRP Program, and the John Templeton Foundation.
C.M. would like to gratefully acknowledge the entire Dragonfly Telephoto Array team, and Bob Abraham in particular, for allowing their telescope bright time to be put to use observing exoplanets.
B.J.H. acknowledges support from the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program (grant No. 80NSSC20K1551) and support by NASA under grant No. 80GSFC21M0002.
K.A.C. and C.N.W. acknowledge support from the TESS mission via subaward s3449 from MIT.
This research made use of Lightkurve, a Python package for Kepler and TESS data analysis (Lightkurve Collaboration et al. 2018).
Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.
D.R.C. and C.A.C. acknowledge support from NASA through the XRP grant No. 18-2XRP18_2-0007. C.A.C. acknowledges that this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
This research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
S.Z. and A.B. acknowledge support from the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology (grant No. 3-18143).
The research leading to these results has received funding from the ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions, financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant No. PDR T.0120.21. TRAPPIST-North is a project funded by the University of Liege (Belgium), in collaboration with Cadi Ayyad University of Marrakech (Morocco). M.G. is F.R.S.-FNRS Research Director and E.J. is F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. The postdoctoral fellowship of K.B. is funded by F.R.S.-FNRS grant No. T.0109.20 and by the Francqui Foundation.
H.P.O.'s contribution has been carried out within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant Nos. 51NF40_182901 and 51NF40_205606.
F.J.P. acknowledges financial support from the grant No. CEX2021-001131-S funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033.
A.J. acknowledges support from ANID—Millennium Science Initiative—ICN12_009 and from FONDECYT project 1210718.
Z.L.D. acknowledges the MIT Presidential Fellowship and that this material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant No. 1745302.
P.R. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant No. 1952545.
Some of the observations in this paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instruments 'Alopeke and Zorro, and were obtained under Gemini LLP Proposal Number GN/S-2021A-LP-105. 'Alopeke/Zorro were funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. Alopeke/Zorro was mounted on the Gemini North/South 8 m telescopes of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea).
This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant Nos. JP17H04574, JP18H05439, JP21K20376; JST CREST grant No. JPMJCR1761; and Astrobiology Center SATELLITE Research project AB022006.
This article is based on observations 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. This paper is based on observations made with the MuSCAT3 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center and under financial supports by JSPS KAKENHI (grant No. JP18H05439) and JST PRESTO (grant No. JPMJPR1775), at Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, HI, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory.
This publication benefits from the support of the French Community of Belgium in the context of the FRIA Doctoral Grant awarded to M.T.
D.D. acknowledges support from TESS Guest Investigator Program grant Nos. 80NSSC22K1353, 80NSSC22K0185, and 80NSSC23K0769.
A.B. acknowledges the support of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University Program of Development.
T.D. was supported in part by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.
V.K. acknowledges support from the youth scientific laboratory project, topic FEUZ-2020-0038.
Facilities
Adams Observatory, ASP, Brierfield Private Observatory, Campo Catino Astronomical Observatory, Catania Astrophysical Observatory, Caucasian Mountain Observatory, CHAT, CROW Observatory, Deep Sky West, Dragonfly, El Sauce, ExTrA, FEROS, Fred L. Whipple Observatory, Gaia, Gemini ('Alopeke, Zorro), George Mason University, HATSouth, Hazelwood Observatory, Keck, Carlson R. Chambliss Astronomical Observatory (CRCAO) at Kutztown University, LCOGT, Lewin Observatory, Lick Observatory, Lookout Observatory, MASTER-Ural, MEarth-S, Mt. Stuart Observatory, MuSCAT, MuSCAT2, MuSCAT3, Observatori Astronòmic de la Universitat de València, Observatori Astronòmic Albanyà Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, Observatory de Ca l'Ou, Palomar Observatory, PEST, Privat Observatory Herges-Hallenberg, PvDKO, RCO, SAINT-EX, Salerno University Observatory, Solaris SLR2, SPECULOOS, SUTO-Otivar, TESS, TRAPPIST, University of Louisville telescopes at the University of Southern Queensland's Mt. Kent Observatory and at Mt. Lemmon Observatory, Union College Observatory, Villa '39, VLT, WASP, WCO, Wellesley College Whitin Observatory, WIYN.
Software References
AstroImageJ, Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), astroquery (Ginsburg et al. 2019), BANZAI (McCully et al. 2018), DEATHSTAR (Ross et al. 2024), Jupyter (Kluyver et al. 2016), Lightkurve (Lightkurve Collaboration et al. 2018), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), numpy (Van Der Walt et al. 2011), pandas (McKinney 2010), TESS Transit Finder (Jensen 2013), Tesscut (Brasseur et al. 2019), TRICERATOPS (Giacalone & Dressing 2020; Giacalone et al. 2021), VESPA (Morton 2012, 2015)
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 1538-3881
- European Space Agency
- Gaia Multilateral Agreement
- National Science Foundation
- AST-0807690
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC18K0476
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP18H05439
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- JPMJPR1775
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- AST-1109468
- National Science Foundation
- AST-1616624
- National Science Foundation
- Alan T. Waterman Award AST-1004488
- John Templeton Foundation
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- s3449
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 18-2XRP18_2-0007
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
- Ministry of Science, Technology and Space
- 3-18143
- French Community of Belgium
- Fund for Scientific Research
- PDR T.0120.21
- University of Liège
- Cadi Ayyad University
- Fund for Scientific Research
- T.0109.20
- Fondation Francqui
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- 51NF40_182901
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- 51NF40_205606
- Agencia Estatal de Investigación
- CEX2021-001131-S
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
- MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033
- Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo
- ICN12_009
- Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico
- 1210718
- National Science Foundation
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship DGE-1745302
- National Science Foundation
- OISE-1952545
- Gemini South Observatory
- GN/S-2021A-LP-105
- NSF's NOIRLab
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP17H04574
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP18H05439
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP21K20376
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- JPMJCR1761
- Astrobiology Center
- AB022006
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- JP18H05439
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- JPMJPR1775
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC22K1353
- Lomonosov Moscow State University
- Washington University in St. Louis
- McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences
- The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
- FEUZ-2020-0038
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)