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Transit and Occultation Data Confirm a Decaying Orbit for WASP-12b
- 1 Carl Sagen Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- 2 School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 3 College of Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
- 4 School of Physics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China
- 5 Nanjing Foreign Language School, Nanjing, China
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
WASP-12b is the first reported hot Jupiter whose orbital period appears to be decreasing with time. This phenomenon can be interpreted using two models from earlier research: the decay of its orbit or the apsidal precession. This work chose the latest 118 transit and 6 occultation photometric observations conducted by TESS in Sectors 20, 43, 44, 45, 71, 72. They were combined with previous data to analyze the relationship between the orbit number, the mid-time of transit, and the mid-time of occultations (averaged over entire sectors to boost the signal-to-noise ratio), which favored the decay model with ∆BIC = 104.09. Our value of decay rate , and the reduced tidal quality factor when interpreting the decay as tidal orbital decay, are both aligned with earlier studies and suggest that the orbit of WASP-12b is in a state of rapid decay. Future observations and theoretical work are necessary to further explain the physical processes driving this decay and to predict the end of life of WASP-12b.
Keywords
Exoplanets, Hot Jupiters, Transits and Occultation, Time Deviation
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Cite this article
Shen,Z.;Meng,H.;Wu,Y.;Zhang,M.;Fei,Y. (2025). Transit and Occultation Data Confirm a Decaying Orbit for WASP-12b. Theoretical and Natural Science,107,111-124.
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