2025-07-14 カリフォルニア大学アーバイン校（UCI）
An exoplanet host with several background stars. If left uncorrected, the additional light from the background stars can lead to underestimated exoplanet size measurements. The square grid represents individual pixels from NASA’s TESS satellite. Nikolai Berman / UC Irvine
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.uci.edu/2025/07/14/uc-irvine-astronomers-discover-scores-of-exoplanets-may-be-larger-than-realized/
- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ade794
TESSの太陽系外惑星は想像以上に大きい？ Hundreds of TESS Exoplanets Might Be Larger than We Thought
Te Han, Paul Robertson, Timothy D. Brandt, Shubham Kanodia, Caleb Cañas, Avi Shporer, George Ricker, and Corey Beard
The Astrophysical Journal Letters Published: 2025 July 14
DOI:10.3847/2041-8213/ade794
Abstract
The radius of a planet is a fundamental parameter that probes its composition and habitability. Precise radius measurements are typically derived from the fraction of starlight blocked when a planet transits its host star. The wide-field Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered hundreds of new exoplanets, but its low angular resolution means that the light from a star hosting a transiting exoplanet can be blended with the light from background stars. If not fully corrected, this extra light can dilute the transit signal and result in a smaller measured planet radius. In a study of hundreds of TESS planet discoveries using deblended light curves from our validated methodology, we show that systematically incorrect planet radii are common in the literature: studies using various public TESS photometry pipelines have underestimated the planet radius by a weighted median of 6.1% ± 0.3%, leading to a ∼20% overestimation of planet density. The widespread presence of these biases in the literature has profoundly shaped—and potentially misrepresented—our understanding of the exoplanet population. Addressing these biases will refine the exoplanet mass–radius relation, reshape our understanding of exoplanet atmospheric and bulk composition, and potentially inform prevailing planet formation theories.
