TOI-1199 b and TOI-1273 b: Two new transiting hot Saturns detected and characterized with SOPHIE and TESS

Abstract

We report the characterization of two planet candidates detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), TOI-1199 b and TOI-1273 b, with periods of 3.7 and 4.6 days, respectively. Follow-up observations for both targets, which include several ground-based light curves, confirmed the transit events. High-precision radial velocities from the SOPHIE spectrograph revealed signals at the expected frequencies and phases of the transiting candidates and allowed mass determinations with a precision of 8.4% and 6.7% for TOI-1199 b and TOI-1273 b, respectively. The planetary and orbital parameters were derived from a joint analysis of the radial velocities and photometric data. We find that the planets have masses of 0.239 ± 0.020 MJ and 0.222 ± 0.015 MJ and radii of 0.938 ± 0.025 RJ and 0.99 ± 0.22 RJ, respectively. The grazing transit of TOI-1273 b translates to a larger uncertainty in its radius, and hence also in its bulk density, compared to TOI-1199 b. The inferred bulk densities of 0.358 ± 0.041 g cm−3 and 0.28 ± 0.11 g cm−3 are among the lowest known for exoplanets in this mass range, which, considering the brightness of the host stars (V≈11 mag), render them particularly amenable to atmospheric characterization via the transit spectroscopy technique. The better constraints on the parameters of TOI-1199 b provide a transmission spectroscopy metric of 134 ± 17, making it the better suited of the two planets for atmospheric studies.