Princeton University Extrasolar Planet Discussion Group

The Kepler Mission has revolutionized exoplanet science, with over 2000 confirmed planets to date. However, most exoplanet host stars observed by Kepler are too faint to perform extensive radial-velocity follow-up to precisely measure Doppler semi-amplitudes and thus, planet masses. The recent successful launch of the NASA TESS Mission has now opened the door to precisely characterize transiting exoplanets orbiting bright stars in the solar neighborhood. The most promising planets will be those orbiting subgiants, whose rapid phase in stellar evolution provides a unique tool to infer precise stellar ages, masses, radii and densities. Subgiants also provide the opportunity to apply asteroseismology, which is currently the best tool for accurate and precise stellar characterization. In this talk, I will present the TESS discovery of solar-like oscillations in the naked-eye solar-analogue alpha Men and discuss why this is a benchmark system for both stellar astrophysics and exoplanet science. Additionally, I will introduce the TESS-Keck Survey (TKS), which is a very large Keck radial velocity survey to confirm and characterize transiting exoplanets discovered by TESS. Finally, I will conclude with early results from an ensemble analysis of TESS planets orbiting subgiant stars as well as its implications for post main-sequence planet evolution.