2025/01/10 by Xinyue Ma, Ma, Xinyue, Wen-Qin Wang +15 · 3 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.05704
openalex publication_date 2025/01/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The ExoEcho project is designed to study the photodynamics of exoplanets by leveraging high-precision transit timing data from ground- and space-based telescopes. Some exoplanets are experiencing orbital decay, and transit timing variation (TTV) is a useful technique to study their orbital period variations. In this study, we have obtained transit middle-time data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations for 37 short-period exoplanets, most of which are hot Jupiters. To search for potential long- and short-term orbital period variations within the sample, we conduct TTV model fitting using both linear and quadratic ephemeris models. Our analysis identifies two hot Jupiters experiencing strong periodic decays. Given the old age of the host stars of the hot Jupiter population, our findings call for a scenario where HJs are continuously being destructed and created. Our study demonstrates the importance of incorporating high-precision transit timing data to TTV study in the future.