Spitzer Transit Follow-up of Planet Candidates from the K2 Mission
Name
Livingston_2019_AJ_157_102.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.36 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
476afe80cb29c1cc880bcaa7c7c721fe
Author(s)
Livingston, John H
Crossfield, Ian Jm
Werner, Michael W
Gorjian, Varoujan
Petigura, Erik A
Ciardi, David R
Dressing, Courtney D
Fulton, Benjamin J
Hirano, Teruyuki
Schlieder, Joshua E
Date Issued
February 2019
Journal
Astronomical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We present precision 4.5 mm Spitzer transit photometry of eight planet candidates discovered by the K2 mission: K2-52 b, K2-53 b, EPIC 205084841.01, K2-289 b, K2-174 b, K2-87 b, K2-90 b, and K2-124 b. The sample includes four sub-Neptunes and two sub-Saturns, with radii between 2.6 and 18 R ® and equilibrium temperatures between 440 and 2000 K. In this paper we identify several targets of potential interest for future characterization studies, demonstrate the utility of transit follow-up observations for planet validation and ephemeris refinement, and present new imaging and spectroscopy data. Our simultaneous analysis of the K2 and Spitzer light curves yields improved estimates of the planet radii and multiwavelength information that helps validate their planetary nature, including the previously unvalidated candidate EPIC 205686202.01 (K2-289 b). Our Spitzer observations yield an order-of-magnitude increase in ephemeris precision, thus paving the way for efficient future study of these interesting systems by reducing the typical transit timing uncertainty in mid-2021 from several hours to a dozen or so minutes. K2-53 b, K2-289 b, K2-174 b, K2-87 b, and K2-90 b are promising radial velocity (RV) targets given the performance of spectrographs available today or in development, and the M3V star K2-124 hosts a temperate sub-Neptune that is potentially a good target for both RV and atmospheric characterization studies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/AAFF69
