180 Transit and occultation times for WASP-12b

DOI

Theory suggests that the orbits of some close-in giant planets should decay due to tidal interactions with their host stars. To date, WASP-12b is the only hot Jupiter reported to have a decaying orbit, at a rate of 29{+/-}2ms/yr. We analyzed data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to verify that WASP-12b's orbit is indeed changing. We find that the TESS transit and occultation data are consistent with a decaying orbit with an updated period of 1.091420090{+/-}0.000000041days and a decay rate of 32.53{+/-}1.62ms/yr. We find an orbital decay timescale of {tau}=P/|P|=2.90{+/-}0.14Myr. If the observed decay results from tidal dissipation, the modified tidal quality factor is Q_*_'=1.39{+/-}0.15x10^5^, which falls at the lower end of values derived for binary star systems and hot Jupiters. Our result highlights the power of space-based photometry for investigating the orbital evolution of short-period exoplanets.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.51610072
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/161/72
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/161/72
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/161/72
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/161/72
Provenance
Creator Turner J.D.; Ridden-Harper A.; Jayawardhana R.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2021
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Exoplanet Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy