Weak evidence for variable occultation depth of 55 Cnc e with TESS

TL;DR

This study investigates the variability of 55 Cnc e's occultation depth using TESS data, finding weak evidence for changes over different observation sectors and confirming the occultation detection in optical wavelengths.

Contribution

First analysis of 55 Cnc e's occultation variability in optical wavelengths, using TESS data and statistical model comparison to assess consistency across sectors.

Findings

Occultation depth varies between sectors with 1.6 to 3.4 sigma significance.

Detection of occultation in TESS data with an average depth of 8±2.5 ppm.

Model comparison favors variable occultation over constant or no occultation.

Abstract

55 Cnc e is in a 0.73 day orbit transiting a Sun-like star. It has been observed that the occultation depth of this Super-Earth, with a mass of 8$M_{\bigoplus}$ and radius of 2$R_{\bigoplus}$, changes significantly over time at mid-infrared wavelengths. Observations with Spitzer measured a change in its day-side brightness temperature of 1200 K, possibly driven by volcanic activity, magnetic star-planet interaction, or the presence of a circumstellar torus of dust. Previous evidence for the variability in occultation was in the infrared range. Here we aim to explore if the variability exists also in the optical. TESS observed 55 Cnc during sectors 21, 44 and 46. We carefully detrend the data and fit a transit and occultation model for each sector in a Markov Chain Monte Carlo routine. In a later stage we use the Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation statistic to compare with a model of constant occultation for the complete set and a model with no occultation. We report an occultation depth of 8$\pm$2.5 ppm for the complete set of TESS observations. In particular, we measured a depth of 15$\pm$4 ppm for sector 21, while for sector 44 we detect no occultation. In sector 46 we measure a weak occultation of 8$\pm$5 ppm. The occultation depth varies from one sector to the next between 1.6 and 3.4 $\sigma$ significance. We derive the possible contribution on reflected light and thermal emission, setting an upper limit on the geometric albedo. Based on our model comparison the presence of an occultation is favoured considerably over no occultation, where the model with varying occultation across sectors takes most of the statistical weight. Our analysis confirms a detection of the occultation in TESS. Moreover, our results weakly lean towards a varying occultation depth between each sector, while the transit depth is constant across visits.