Gaia Exoplanet Orbits, Demographics, and Evolution Survey (GEODES). I. Characteristics of Three Long-period Companions Accelerating their Host Stars
August 2026 • 2026ApJ..1006..222V
Abstract
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The upcoming release of Gaia DR4 will yield thousands of giant planet candidates, eventually enabling studies of giant planet eccentricities, masses, and occurrence rates across a broad range of stellar host masses, metallicities, and ages. However, some of these planet candidates are expected to be false positives and even genuine detections will require additional observations to precisely determine their orbits and masses. We present here the first results of the Gaia Exoplanet Orbits, Demographics, and Evolution Survey, an observational campaign to identify the most promising planet candidate hosts for pre-DR4 vetting and post-DR4 validation and characterization. In this paper, we showcase three systems from our broader sample exhibiting both tangential and radial accelerations, each representing a distinct outcome of our survey strategy. We combine Hipparcos, Hipparcos-Gaia, Gaia DR2, and Gaia DR3 absolute astrometry with adaptive optics (AO) imaging and precision radial velocities (RVs) to constrain companion masses and orbits. HIP 18512, a nearby (15.3 pc) K4V dwarf, hosts a low-mass stellar companion at
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