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Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) Monthly Meeting
Exoplanets Transiting Faint Stars in the TESS Full Frame Images
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is proceeding with its mission of discovering small planets transiting bright stars. TESS is able to determine the mass of these host stars and hence bulk and atmospheric characterization of the transiting exoplanets. Exoplanet searches using TESS have so far focused on bright host stars or on specific populations (e.g. young) of stars. Dr. Daylan has been working on extending the TESS survey to fainter host stars with a limiting magnitude of about T=13.5. Toward that end, he uses the Quick Look Pipeline (QLP) light curves to construct summary metrics from the full frame images to vet Threshold Crossing Events by excluding false positives such as eclipsing binaries, stellar variability, and other factors. Preliminary results of this effort recently pushed the number of TESS Objects of Interest above 4400, with a further 1500 candidates expected by the end of the extended mission. This projected yield is especially important to achieve a full-sky demographic survey of exoplanets with a well-characterized selection function.