Exoplanets, -moons, -comets

Automatic Search For Transiting Planets In TESS-SPOC FFIs With RAVEN: Over 100 Newly Validated Planets And Over 2000 Vetted Candidates

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.EP

March 26, 2026

Filed under astronomy, exoplanet, Gaia mission, RAVEN, Stellar Cartography, TESS

Automatic Search For Transiting Planets In TESS-SPOC FFIs With RAVEN: Over 100 Newly Validated Planets And Over 2000 Vetted Candidates — TOI/CTOI candidates recovered in our vetted sample (875 TOIs and 37 CTOIs) in period-radius space. The values shown are the results of our juliet fits (see Sect. 3.3). TOIs with ExoFOP disposition KP, CP, PC, APC, and FP are shown as black circles, blue up triangles, pink down triangles, yellow left triangles, and green right triangles, respectively. CTOIs are shown as purple diamonds. Solid grey lines and grey-shaded area show the Neptunian desert limits according to Mazeh et al. (2016), and dashed grey lines show the recently derived limits between the Neptunian desert, ridge, and savannah from Castro-González et al. (2024). Dotted grey vertical and horizontal lines show our pipeline’s detection/validation limits: periods from 0.5 to 16 d and radii below 8 R_⊕. — astro-ph.EP

Space-based missions such as TESS are identifying a wealth of short-period (≲30 d) transiting planets. Despite the growing number of confirmed and candidate planets, the sample is still incomplete and highly biased, challenging demographic studies.

Moreover, there are still a large number of unconfirmed candidates that can end up being false positives. We use the new pipeline RAVEN to perform a uniform search and validation of transiting planet candidates in TESS data. We focus on a magnitude-limited sample of over 2.2 million main sequence stars well characterised by Gaia and observed by TESS in its Full Frame Images during its first 4 years of operations (sectors 1 to 55).

We aim to detect candidates with periods within 0.5−16 days. RAVEN detects candidates with a box least squares algorithm, classifies them into transiting planets and false positives using machine learning models trained with realistic simulations, and performs statistical validation.

We present several samples of candidates with different levels of vetting and validation. We newly validate 118 planets, including 31 newly detected here. We also present a sample of over 2000 candidates not validated but with high probability of being planets, including ∼1000 new candidates, a small sample of newly identified mono- and duo-transiting candidates, and a sample of large radii (>8 R_⊕) candidates with high planet probability suited for further follow-up.

Our samples of vetted and validated transiting planet candidates represent a major effort towards improving the candidate sample from TESS.

M. Lafarga, D. J. Armstrong, K. Cui, A. Hadjigeorghiou, V. Kunovac, L. Doyle, E. M. Bryant, R. F. Díaz, L. A. Nieto, A. Osborn

Comments: 27 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.22597 [astro-ph.EP](or arXiv:2603.22597v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.22597
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Submission history
From: Marina Lafarga
[v1] Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:47:43 UTC (26,737 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22597
Astrobiology, exoplanet,

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) 🖖🏻

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