CaltechAUTHORS
Published May 2020 | Version Accepted Version + Published
Journal Article Open

Securing the Legacy of TESS through the Care and Maintenance of TESS Planet Ephemerides

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon University of New Mexico
  • 3. ROR icon New College of Florida
  • 4. ROR icon Lehigh University
  • 5. ROR icon University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  • 6. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 7. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 8. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 9. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 10. ROR icon NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

Abstract

Much of the science from the exoplanets detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission relies on precisely predicted transit times that are needed for many follow-up characterization studies. We investigate ephemeris deterioration for simulated TESS planets and find that the ephemerides of 81% of those will have expired (i.e., 1σ mid-transit time uncertainties greater than 30 minutes) 1 yr after their TESS observations. We verify these results using a sample of TESS planet candidates as well. In particular, of the simulated planets that would be recommended as James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) targets by Kempton et al., ~80% will have mid-transit time uncertainties >30 minutes by the earliest time JWST would observe them. This rapid deterioration is driven primarily by the relatively short time baseline of TESS observations. We describe strategies for maintaining TESS ephemerides fresh through follow-up transit observations. We find that the longer the baseline between the TESS and the follow-up observations, the longer the ephemerides stay fresh, and that 51% of simulated primary mission TESS planets will require space-based observations. The recently approved extension to the TESS mission will rescue the ephemerides of most (though not all) primary mission planets, but the benefits of these new observations can only be reaped 2 yr after the primary mission observations. Moreover, the ephemerides of most primary mission TESS planets (as well as those newly discovered during the extended mission) will again have expired by the time future facilities such as the ELTs, Ariel, and the possible LUVOIR/Origins Space Telescope missions come online, unless maintenance follow-up observations are obtained.

Additional Information

© 2020 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2019 June 5; revised 2020 March 23; accepted 2020 March 23; published 2020 April 21. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission that are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission directorate. We acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and 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. J.P. acknowledges funding support from the NSF REU program under grant No. PHY-1359195. We thank the anonymous referee for feedback that has significantly improved the clarity of the paper. The authors thank Karen Collins, Chelsea Huang, Robert Zellem, Stephen Kane, Luke Bouma, Laura Kreidberg, Sam Quinn, Sam Hadden, and Jacob Bean for suggestions of figures and discussion points to make the paper useful to a wide range of observing interests. D.D. acknowledges support provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HSTHF2-51372.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. T.B. acknowledges support from the Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration.

Attached Files

Published - Dragomir_2020_AJ_159_219.pdf

Accepted Version - 1906.02197.pdf

Files

1906.02197.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
103206
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20200514-135410995

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02197 (URL)

Funding

NSF
PHY-1359195
NASA Hubble Fellowship
HST-HF2-51372.001-A
NASA
NAS5-26555
Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration

Dates

Created
2020-05-14
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)