A TESS Disappearing Act: The Vanishing Transits of TOI-2535 b

Abstract

Planetary transits require a fortuitous alignment between a planet's orbit and our line of sight, but dynamical interactions can render this geometric coincidence only temporary. We report the discovery of the hot Jupiter TOI-2535 b, the first confirmed planet orbiting a single star whose transits have been directly observed to disappear. Over seven years of photometry from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the planet's transit chord traversed and eventually moved off the stellar disk entirely, with an impact parameter changing at the rate of $\dot{b}=0.16{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$. The transit mid-times also show significant departures of $\pm 6$ hours from a linear ephemeris. Joint modeling of the transit timing and duration variations (TTVs and TDVs) and NEID radial-velocity data indicates the presence of a nearby, mutually inclined ($i_{\mathrm{mut}}\gtrsim 5^{\circ }$) planetary perturber, with the TDV being primarily due to precession of the planets' orbital planes. Our dynamical modeling reveals that the perturber is likely of Saturn-mass or greater and in a mean-motion resonance with TOI-2535 b, making this an unusual system that contains two short-period giant planets. The TDVs measured for TOI-2535 b represent one of the most extreme examples of planet-planet interactions driving orbital evolution on human timescales.

arXiv comment5 figures, 17 pages + appendices. Published in ApJ Letters. Animated schematic for one possible system architecture available at https://samuelyeewl.github.io/assets/img/toi2535_press_hd_with_data.mp4

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