Stellar Obliquities of Young Systems, Atmospheres Undergoing Contraction and Escape (SOYSAUCE): a likely aligned orbit for the 3 Myr planet TIDYE-1 b

TL;DR

This study measures the obliquity of the 3-million-year-old planet TIDYE-1 b, finding it likely aligned with its star despite the outer disk's misalignment, providing insights into early planetary system dynamics.

Contribution

First obliquity measurement of a young transiting planet with a misaligned disk, demonstrating the planet's orbit remains aligned during early system stages.

Findings

Obliquity of TIDYE-1 b is approximately 12 degrees.

Planet's orbit is consistent with alignment despite disk misalignment.

Results suggest early planetary orbits can remain aligned.

Abstract

Despite the wide range of planet-star (mis)alignments in the mature population of transiting exoplanets, the small number of known young transiting planets are nearly all aligned with the rotation axes of their host stars, as determined by the sky-projected obliquity angle. The small number of young systems with measured obliquities limits statistical conclusions. Here we determine the sky-projected obliquity ($\lambda$) of the 3 Myr transiting planet with a misaligned outer protoplanetary disk, TIDYE-1 b (IRAS 04125+2902 b), using the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect. Our dataset lacks a pre-transit baseline and ingress, complicating a blind RM fit. Instead, we use contemporaneous spectra and photometry from a mass-measurement campaign to model the stellar activity trend across the transit and provide an external prior on the velocity baseline. We determine $|\lambda|=11.8^{+5.9\,\circ}_{-5.0}$. Combined with the published rotational velocity of the star, we find a true three-dimensional obliquity of $\psi=15.2^{+7.3\,\circ}_{-5.7}$. Our result is consistent with an aligned orbit, suggesting the planet remains aligned to its star even though the outer disk is misaligned, though additional RM observations are needed to exclude the low-probability tail of misaligned ($>30^{\circ}$) scenarios present in our posterior.