TOI 122b and TOI 237b: Two Small Warm Planets Orbiting Inactive M Dwarfs Found by TESS

Creators: Waalkes, William C.; Berta-Thompson, Zachory K.; Collins, Karen A.; Feinstein, Adina D.; Tofflemire, Benjamin M.; Rojas-Ayala, Bárbara; Silverstein, Michele L.; Newton, Elisabeth; Ricker, George R.; Vanderspek, Roland; Latham, David W.; Seager, S.; Winn, Joshua N.; Jenkins, Jon M.; Christiansen, Jessie; Goeke, Robert F.; Levine, Alan M.; Osborn, H. P.; Rinehart, S. A.; Rose, Mark E.; Ting, Eric B.; Twicken, Joseph D.; Barkaoui, Khalid; Bean, Jacob L.; Briceño, César; Ciardi, David R.; Collins, Kevin I.; Conti, Dennis; Gan, Tianjun; Gillon, Michaël; Isopi, Giovanni; Jehin, Emmanuël; Jensen, Eric L. N.; Kielkopf, John F.; Law, Nicholas; Mallia, Franco; Mann, Andrew W.; Montet, Benjamin T.; Pozuelos, Francisco J.; Relles, Howard; Libby-Roberts, Jessica E.; Ziegler, Carl

Abstract

We report the discovery and validation of TOI 122b and TOI 237b, two warm planets transiting inactive M dwarfs observed by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Our analysis shows that TOI 122b has a radius of 2.72 ± 0.18 R_⊕ and receives 8.8 ± 1.0 times Earth's bolometric insolation, and TOI 237b has a radius of 1.44±0.12 R_⊕ and receives 3.7 ± 0.5 times Earth's insolation, straddling the 6.7 × Earth insolation that Mercury receives from the Sun. This makes these two of the cooler planets yet discovered by TESS, even on their 5.08 and 5.43 day orbits. Together, they span the small-planet radius valley, providing useful laboratories for exploring volatile evolution around M dwarfs. Their relatively nearby distances (62.23 ± 0.21 pc and 38.11 ± 0.23 pc, respectively) make them potentially feasible targets for future radial velocity follow-up and atmospheric characterization, although such observations may require substantial investments of time on large telescopes.

Additional Information

© 2020 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 April 23; revised 2020 October 2; accepted 2020 October 20; published 2020 December 7. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission directorate. We acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the ExoFOP-TESS website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant No. (DGE-1650115) and (DGE-1746045). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. The research leading to these results has received funding from the ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions, financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant FRFC 2.5.594.09.F, with the participation of the Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF). M.G. and E.J. are F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associates. B.R-A. acknowledges the funding support from FONDECYT through grant 11181295. Z.K.B.T. gratefully acknowledges support for this work from the TESS Guest Investigator program (Award #80NSSC18K1588) and the National Science Foundation CAREER program (Award ##1945633).

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