An examination of the effect of the TESS extended mission on southern hemisphere monotransits

TL;DR

This study simulates how the extended TESS mission will increase the detection and characterization of monotransiting exoplanets in the southern hemisphere, highlighting the potential for improved period constraints.

Contribution

It provides updated predictions on monotransit detections and their re-observation rates with the extended TESS mission, including implications for period estimation.

Findings

Approximately 339 monotransits predicted in Year 1.

About 80% of Year 1 monotransits will transit again in Year 4.

Total of 149 monotransits from combined Year 1 and Year 4 data.

Abstract

Context: NASA recently announced an extended mission for TESS. As a result it is expected that the southern ecliptic hemisphere will be re-observed approximately two years after the initial survey. Aims: We aim to explore how TESS re-observing the southern ecliptic hemisphere will impact the number and distribution of mono-transits discovered during the first year of observations. This simulation will be able to be scaled to any future TESS re-observations. Methods: We carry out an updated simulation of TESS detections in the southern ecliptic hemisphere. This simulation includes realistic Sector window-functions based on the first 11 sectors of SPOC 2 min SAP lightcurves. We then extend this simulation to cover the expected Year 4 of the mission when TESS will re-observed the southern ecliptic fields. For recovered monotransits we also look at the possibility of predicting the period based on the coverage in the TESS data. Results: We find an updated prediction of 339 monotransits from the TESS Year 1 southern ecliptic hemisphere, and that approximately 80% of these systems (266/339) will transit again in the Year 4 observations. The Year 4 observations will also contribute new monotransits not seen in Year 1, resulting in a total of 149 monotransits from the combined Year 1 and Year 4 data sets. We find that 75% (189/266) of recovered Year 1 monotransits will only transit once in the Year 4 data set. For these systems we will be able to constrain possible periods, but period aliasing due to the large time gap between Year 1 and Year 4 observations means that the true period will remain unknown with further spectroscopic or photometric follow-up.