Non-detection of previously reported transits of HD 97658b with MOST photometry

Abstract

The radial velocity-discovered exoplanet HD 97658b was recently announced to transit, with a derived planetary radius of 2.93 \pm 0.28 R_{Earth}. As a transiting super-Earth orbiting a bright star, this planet would make an attractive candidate for additional observations, including studies of its atmospheric properties. We present and analyze follow-up photometric observations of the HD 97658 system acquired with the MOST space telescope. Our results show no transit with the depth and ephemeris reported in the announcement paper. For the same ephemeris, we rule out transits for a planet with radius larger than 2.09 R_{Earth}, corresponding to the reported 3σlower limit. We also report new radial velocity measurements which continue to support the existence of an exoplanet with a period of 9.5 days, and obtain improved orbital parameters.

16 pages, 4 figures; 1 Table; accepted for publication in ApJL, includes changes made in response to the referee report

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Transit Detection in the MEarth Survey of Nearby M Dwarfs: Bridging the Clean-First, Search-Later Divide
• MOST detects transits of HD 97658b, a warm, likely volatile-rich super-Earth
• Transit confirmation and improved stellar and planet parameters for the super-Earth HD 97658 b and its host star
• Examining the orbital decay targets KELT-9 b, KELT-16 b and WASP-4 b, and the transit-timing variations of HD 97658 b
• A Spitzer Search for Transits of Radial Velocity Detected Super-Earths