Abstract
ABSTRACT We report the discovery of the transiting exoplanet NGTS-12b by the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The host star, NGTS-12, is a V = 12.38 mag star with an effective temperature of Teff = 5690 ± 130 K. NGTS-12b orbits with a period of P = 7.53 d, making it the longest period planet discovered to date by the main NGTS survey. We verify the NGTS transit signal with data extracted from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) full-frame images, and combining the photometry with radial velocity measurements from HARPS and FEROS we determine NGTS-12b to have a mass of 0.208 ± 0.022 MJ and a radius of 1.048 ± 0.032 RJ. NGTS-12b sits on the edge of the Neptunian desert when we take the stellar properties into account, highlighting the importance of considering both the planet and star when studying the desert. The long period of NGTS-12b combined with its low density of just 0.223 ± 0.029 g cm−3 make it an attractive target for atmospheric characterization through transmission spectroscopy with a Transmission Spectroscopy Metric of 89.4.
Highlights
Detecting exoplanets via transits has proved to be a very successful path for discovering other worlds
We report the discovery of the transiting exoplanet Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)-12b by the Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)
We verify the NGTS transit signal with data extracted from the TESS full-frame images, and combining the photometry with radial velocity measurements from HARPS and FEROS we determine NGTS-12b to have a mass of 0.208 ± 0.022 MJ and a radius of 1.048 ± 0.032 RJ
Summary
Detecting exoplanets via transits has proved to be a very successful path for discovering other worlds. The Generation Transit Survey (NGTS; Wheatley et al 2018) is a ground-based exoplanet hunting facility which is situated at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile It consists of twelve fully robotic telescopes each with a 20 cm photometric aperture and a wide field-of-view of 8 deg. By combining the excellent observing conditions at Paranal Observatory with back-illuminated CCD cameras and sub-pixel level autoguiding (McCormac et al 2013) on ultra-stable mounts, NGTS can achieve a higher photometric precision than previous ground-based facilities. This was demonstrated with the discovery of NGTS-4b (West et al 2019), a Neptune-sized exoplanet with a transit depth of just 0.13%.
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