Revisiting the Kepler field with TESS: Improved ephemerides using TESS 2min data

TL;DR

This paper updates the orbital parameters of Kepler exoplanets using TESS 2-minute data, achieving high-precision ephemerides that are significantly more recent than previous data, enhancing exoplanet characterization capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a photometric method for updating exoplanet ephemerides using TESS data, applicable even without radial velocity measurements, and demonstrates improved precision for multiple Kepler planets.

Findings

At least seven years' improvement in ephemeris accuracy.

Significantly reduced period uncertainties for specific Kepler planets.

TESS proves to be a powerful tool for exoplanet follow-up and ephemeris refinement.

Abstract

Up to date planet ephemerides are becoming increasingly important as exoplanet science moves from detecting exoplanets to characterising their architectures and atmospheres in depth. In this work ephemerides are updated for 22 Kepler planets and 4 Kepler planet candidates, constituting all Kepler planets and candidates with sufficient signal to noise in the TESS 2min dataset. A purely photometric method is utilised here to allow ephemeris updates for planets even when they do not posses significant radial velocity data. The obtained ephemerides are of very high precision and at least seven years 'fresher' than archival ephemerides. In particular, significantly reduced period uncertainties for Kepler-411d, Kepler-538b and the candidates K00075.01/K00076.01 are reported. O-C diagrams were generated for all objects, with the most interesting ones discussed here. Updated TTV fits of five known multiplanet systems with significant TTVs were also attempted (Kepler-18, Kepler-25, Kepler-51, Kepler-89, and Kepler-396), however these suffered from the comparative scarcity and dimness of these systems in TESS. Despite these difficulties, TESS has once again shown itself to be an incredibly powerful follow-up instrument as well as a planet-finder in its own right. Extension of the methods used in this paper to the 30min-cadence TESS data and TESS extended mission has the potential to yield updated ephemerides of hundreds more systems in the future.