Confirmation and Characterization of the Eccentric, Warm Jupiter TIC 393818343 b with a Network of Citizen Scientists

TL;DR

This paper confirms the existence of a highly eccentric warm Jupiter exoplanet, TIC 393818343 b, using citizen science data, and characterizes its orbital and physical properties, providing insights into warm Jupiter populations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the successful use of citizen science ground-based observations to confirm and characterize a single-transit exoplanet detected by TESS, revealing a highly eccentric warm Jupiter.

Findings

Confirmed TIC 393818343 b as a warm Jupiter with a 16.249-day period.

Measured a high eccentricity of 0.6058 for the planet.

Determined the planet's mass as 4.34 Jupiter masses.

Abstract

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has identified over 7,000 candidate exoplanets via the transit method, with gas giants among the most readily detected due to their large radii. Even so, long intervals between TESS observations for much of the sky lead to candidates for which only a single transit is detected in one TESS sector, leaving those candidate exoplanets with unconstrained orbital periods. Here, we confirm the planetary nature of TIC 393818343 b, originally identified via a single TESS transit, using radial velocity data and ground-based photometric observations from citizen scientists with the Unistellar Network and Exoplanet Watch. We determine a period of $P$ = 16.24921 $\substack{+0.00010 \\ -0.00011}$ days, a mass $M_{P}$ = 4.34 $\pm$ 0.15 $M_{J}$, and semi-major axis $a$ = 0.1291 $\substack{+0.0021 \\ -0.0022}$ au, placing TIC 393818343 b in the "warm Jupiter" population of exoplanets. With an eccentricity $e$ = 0.6058 $\pm$ 0.0023, TIC 393818343 b is the most eccentric warm Jupiter to be discovered by TESS orbiting less than 0.15 au from its host star and therefore an excellent candidate for follow-up, as it may inform our future understanding of how hot and warm Jupiter populations are linked.