The TESS Faint Star Search: 1,617 TOIs from the TESS Primary Mission

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of 1,617 new transiting planet candidates from TESS data, utilizing an independent vetting pipeline to identify candidates around fainter stars that were previously un-vetted, enhancing exoplanet demographics studies.

Contribution

It introduces a new vetting pipeline that automates and improves the identification of planet candidates in TESS data, especially around fainter stars, expanding the known exoplanet sample.

Findings

Discovery of 1,617 new planet candidates from TESS data.

Enhanced vetting process for fainter stars beyond previous manual methods.

Improved statistical power for exoplanet demographics studies.

Abstract

We present the detection of 1,617 new transiting planet candidates, identified in the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) full-frame images (FFIs) observed during the Primary Mission (Sectors 1 - 26). These candidates were initially detected by the Quick-Look Pipeline (QLP), which extracts FFI lightcurves for and searches all stars brighter than TESS magnitude T = 13.5 mag in each sector. However, QLP heavily relies on manual inspection for the identification of planet candidates, limiting vetting efforts to planet-hosting stars brighter than T = 10.5 mag and leaving millions of potential transit signals un-vetted. We describe an independent vetting pipeline applied to QLP transit search results, incorporating both automated vetting tests and manual inspection to identify promising planet candidates around these fainter stars. The new candidates discovered by this ongoing project will allow TESS to significantly improve the statistical power of demographics studies of giant, close-in exoplanets.