Planet Hunters TESS I: TOI 813, a subgiant hosting a transiting Saturn-sized planet on an 84-day orbit

Abstract

We report on the discovery and validation of TOI 813 b (TIC 55525572 b), a transiting exoplanet identified by citizen scientists in data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the first planet discovered by the Planet Hunters TESS project. The host star is a bright (V = 10.3 mag) subgiant (R = 1.94 R, M = 1.32 M). It was observed almost continuously by TESS during its first year of operations, during which time four individual transit events were detected. The candidate passed all the standard light curve-based vetting checks, and ground-based follow-up spectroscopy and speckle imaging enabled us to place an upper limit of 2 MJup (99 per cent confidence) on the mass of the companion, and to statistically validate its planetary nature. Detailed modelling of the transits yields a period of 83.8911+0.0027 −0.0031 d, a planet radius of 6.71 ± 0.38 R⊕ and a semimajor axis of 0.423+0.031 −0.037 AU. The planet’s orbital period combined with the evolved nature of the host star places this object in a relatively underexplored region of parameter space. We estimate that TOI 813 b induces a reflex motion in its host star with a semi-amplitude of ∼6ms−1, making this a promising system to measure the mass of a relatively long-period transiting planet