335 research outputs found
A Revised Exoplanet Yield from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has a goal of detecting
small planets orbiting stars bright enough for mass determination via
ground-based radial velocity observations. Here we present estimates of how
many exoplanets the TESS mission will detect, physical properties of the
detected planets, and the properties of the stars that those planets orbit.
This work uses stars drawn from the TESS Input Catalog Candidate Target List
and revises yields from prior studies that were based on Galactic models. We
modeled the TESS observing strategy to select approximately 200,000 stars at
2-minute cadence, while the remaining stars are observed at 30-min cadence in
full-frame image data. We placed zero or more planets in orbit around each
star, with physical properties following measured exoplanet occurrence rates,
and used the TESS noise model to predict the derived properties of the detected
exoplanets. In the TESS 2-minute cadence mode we estimate that TESS will find
1250+/-70 exoplanets (90% confidence), including 250 smaller than 2
Earth-radii. Furthermore, we predict an additional 3100 planets will be found
in full-frame image data orbiting bright dwarf stars and more than 10,000
around fainter stars. We predict that TESS will find 500 planets orbiting
M-dwarfs, but the majority of planets will orbit stars larger than the Sun. Our
simulated sample of planets contains hundreds of small planets amenable to
radial velocity follow-up, potentially more than tripling the number of planets
smaller than 4 Earth-radii with mass measurements. This sample of simulated
planets is available for use in planning follow-up observations and analyses.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS. Table 2 is available in
machine-readable format from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.613767
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