Exoplanetology: Exoplanets & Exomoons

DEATHSTAR: A System For Confirming Planets And Identifying False Positive Signals In TESS Data Using Ground-based Time Domain Surveys

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.EP

December 13, 2023

Filed under astro-ph.EP, astronomy, DEATHSTAR, TESS

DEATHSTAR: A System For Confirming Planets And Identifying False Positive Signals In TESS Data Using Ground-based Time Domain Surveys — Images of the TESS planet candidate TOI 4148.01 that show the difference in spatial resolution between seeing-limited ground-based observations and TESS data. We show a ground-based image from Pan-STARRS in the left panel and an image of the same field in TESS in the right panel. The cross marker shows the location of original target from TESS in both images and the circle shows the location of the actual signal of this TOI. While both of these stars are clearly visible and easily distinguished in the ground data from Pan-STARRS, the majority of the same field is completely blended in TESS. This blending results in many false positives for TESS. — astro-ph.EP

We present a technique for verifying or refuting exoplanet candidates from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission by searching for nearby eclipsing binary stars using higher-resolution archival images from ground-based telescopes.

Our new system is called Detecting and Evaluating A Transit: finding its Hidden Source in Time-domain Archival Records (DEATHSTAR). We downloaded time series of cutout images from two ground-based telescope surveys (the Zwicky Transient Facility, or ZTF, and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS), analyzed the images to create apertures and measure the brightness of each star in the field, and plotted the resulting light curves using custom routines.

Thus far, we have confirmed on-target transits for 17 planet candidates, and identified 35 false positives and located their actual transit sources. With future improvements to automation, DEATHSTAR will be scaleable to run on the majority of TOIs.

Gabrielle Ross, Andrew Vanderburg, Zoë L. de Beurs, Karen A. Collins, Rob J. Siverd, Kevin Burdge

Comments: 17 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2312.08373 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2312.08373v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Gabrielle Ross
[v1] Wed, 13 Dec 2023 18:59:59 UTC (6,380 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.08373

Astrobiology

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

Follow on Twitter