A 16 Myr Super-Neptune in Upper Centaurus Lupus and a Preliminary Survey of Transiting Planets in Sco-Cen with TESS

August 2025 • 2025AJ....170..131V

Authors • Vach, Sydney • Zhou, George • Mann, Andrew W. • Barber, Madyson G. • Fairnington, Tyler R. • Huang, Chelsea X. • Rogers, James G. • Bouma, Luke G. • Krüger, Joachim • Wright, Duncan • Niblett, Annabelle E. • Nelson, Jack M. • Quinn, Samuel N. • Latham, David W. • Bieryla, Allyson • Collins, Karen A. • Kunimoto, Michelle • Watkins, Cristilyn N. • Schwarz, Richard P. • Collins, Kevin I. • Sefako, Ramotholo • Horne, Keith • Howell, Steve B. • Clark, Catherine A. • Littlefield, Colin • Christiansen, Jessie L. • Essack, Zahra • Winn, Joshua N.

Abstract • Measuring the properties of planets younger than about 50 Myr helps to test different planetary formation and evolution models. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has observed nearly the entire sky, including a wide range of star-forming regions and young stellar clusters, expanding our census of the newborn planet population. In this work, we present the discovery of the TIC 88785435 planetary system located in the Upper Centaurus Lupus (UCL) region of the Scorpius Centaurus OB association (Sco-Cen) and a preliminary survey of the planet population within Sco-Cen. TIC 88785435 is a pre-main-sequence, K7V dwarf (M_⋆ = 0.72 M_⊙, R_⋆ = 0.91 R_⊙, T_eff = 3998 K, V = 11.7 mag) located within the bounds of UCL. We investigate the distribution of rotation periods measured from the TESS long-cadence data and the Hα and Li abundances from the spectra of TIC 88785435. TESS long-cadence data reveal that TIC 88785435 hosts a transiting super-Neptune (R_b = 5.03 R_⊕, P = 10.51 days), TIC 88785435b. Ground-based follow-up validates the planetary nature of TIC 88785435b. Using the TESS data, we perform a preliminary survey to investigate how TIC 88785435b compares to the population of newly born planets located within Sco-Cen.

Links

• PDF https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ade67f/pdf
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00576
• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ade67f