Published September 2024 | Published
Journal Article Open

The TESS-Keck Survey. XXII. A Sub-Neptune Orbiting TOI-1437

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Riverside
  • 2. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 3. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 4. ROR icon University of Kansas
  • 5. ROR icon Vanderbilt University
  • 6. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 7. ROR icon NASA Exoplanet Science Institute
  • 8. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 9. ROR icon Centro de Astrobiología
  • 10. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 11. ROR icon California State University, San Marcos
  • 12. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 13. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 14. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • 15. ROR icon University of Sydney
  • 16. ROR icon University of Southern Queensland
  • 17. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 18. ROR icon University of Notre Dame
  • 19. ROR icon American Museum of Natural History
  • 20. ROR icon Northwestern University
  • 21. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 22. ROR icon Yale University

Abstract

Exoplanet discoveries have revealed a dramatic diversity of planet sizes across a vast array of orbital architectures. Sub-Neptunes are of particular interest; due to their absence in our own solar system, we rely on demographics of exoplanets to better understand their bulk composition and formation scenarios. Here, we present the discovery and characterization of TOI-1437 b, a sub-Neptune with a 18.84 day orbit around a near-solar analog (M = 1.10 ± 0.10 MR=1.17 ± 0.12 R). The planet was detected using photometric data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission and radial velocity (RV) follow-up observations were carried out as a part of the TESS-Keck Survey using both the HIRES instrument at Keck Observatory and the Levy Spectrograph on the Automated Planet Finder telescope. A combined analysis of these data reveal a planet radius of Rp = 2.24 ± 0.23 R and a mass measurement of Mp = 9.6 ± 3.9 M). TOI-1437 b is one of few (∼50) known transiting sub-Neptunes orbiting a solar-mass star that has a RV mass measurement. As the formation pathway of these worlds remains an unanswered question, the precise mass characterization of TOI-1437 b may provide further insight into this class of planet.

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 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 and on the Automated Planet Finder. 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 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. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission that are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Data was taken from the TESS Input Catalog (STScI 2018).

D.P. acknowledges support from the NASA FINESST Fellowship issued via grant No. 80NSSC22K1319.

M.L.H. would like to acknowledge NASA support via the FINESST Planetary Science Division, NASA award number 80NSSC21K1536.

D.R.C. acknowledges partial support from NASA grant 18-2XRP18_2-0007.

D.H. acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC21K0652) and the Australian Research Council (FT200100871).

J.L.-B. was partly funded by the Ramón y Cajal program with code RYC2021-031640-I. and by the Spanish MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 grant PID2019-107061GB-C61.

J.M.A.M. is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant No. DGE-1842400.

This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program (ExoFOP; DOI: 10.26134/ExoFOP5) website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

Some of the observations in this paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument 'Alopeke and were obtained under Gemini LLP Proposal Number: GN/S-2021A-LP-105. 'Alopeke was 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 was mounted on the Gemini North telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's OIR Lab, 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 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).

The authors thank Eric Mamajek for helpful discussions that improved the quality of this manuscript.

Files

Pidhorodetska_2024_AJ_168_135.pdf
Files (1.2 MB)
Name Size Download all
md5:54c94f7b124edd8b6da8e7aeb0d5e883
1.2 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
March 3, 2025
Modified:
March 3, 2025