Search

The CARMENES radial-velocity survey is currently searching for planets in a sample of 387 M dwarfs. Here we report on two Saturn-mass planets orbiting TYC 2187-512-1 (M* = 0.50 M⊙) and TZ Ari (M* = 0.15 M⊙), respectively. We obtained supplementary photometric time series, which we use along with spectroscopic information to determine the rotation periods of the two stars. In both cases, the radial velocities also show strong modulations at the respective rotation period. We thus modeled the radial velocities as a Keplerian orbit plus a Gaussian process representing the stellar variability. TYC 2187-512-1 is found to harbor a planet with a minimum mass of 0.33 MJup in a near-circular 692-day orbit. The companion of TZ Ari has a minimum mass of 0.21 MJup, orbital period of 771 d, and orbital eccentricity of 0.46. We provide an overview of all known giant planets in the CARMENES sample, from which we infer an occurrence rate of giant planets orbiting M dwarfs with periods up to 2 yr in the range between 2 and 6%. TZ Ari b is only the second giant planet discovered orbiting a host with mass less than 0.3 M⊙. These objects occupy an extreme location in the planet mass versus host mass plane. It is difficult to explain their formation in core-accretion scenarios, so they may possibly have been formed through a disk fragmentation process. © ESO 2022., CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Program and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. We acknowledge financial support from NASA through grant NNX17AG24G. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades through projects PID2019-110689RB-100, PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PID2019-107061GB-C64 and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa”, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). We further acknowledge support by the BNSF program “VIHREN-2021” project No. KIJ-06-DB/5. Based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). Data were partly collected with the 150 and 90 cm telescopes at the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada (OSN) operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC). This work makes use of observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is recording short-cadence, high duty-cycle timeseries across most of the sky, which presents the opportunity to detect and study oscillations in interesting stars, in particular planet hosts. We have detected and analysed solar-like oscillations in the bright G4 subgiant HD 38529, which hosts an inner, roughly Jupiter-mass planet on a 14.3d orbit and an outer, low-mass brown dwarf on a 2136 d orbit. We combine results frommultiple stellarmodelling teams to produce robust asteroseismic estimates of the star's properties, including its mass M = 1.48 +/- 0.04 M-circle dot, radius R = 2.68 +/- 0.03 R-circle dot, and age t = 3.07 +/- 0.39 Gyr. Our results confirm that HD 38529 has a mass near the higher end of the range that can be found in the literature and also demonstrate that precise stellar properties can be measured given shorter timeseries than produced by CoRoT, Kepler, or K2., UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) [ST/R0023297/1]; Danish National Research FoundationDanmarks Grundforskningsfond [DNRF106]; grant FPI-SO from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) [SEV-2015-0548-17-2, BES-2017-082610]; Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship [RYC-2015-17697]; NASANational Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) [NNX17AF27G, NNX16AI09G, 80NSSC19K0374]; TESS GI Program under NASA [80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0385]; Carlsberg FoundationCarlsberg Foundation [CF19-0649]; Independent Research Fund Denmark [7027-00096B]; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astrophysik; national funds through Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT); FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) [UIDB/04434/2020, UIDP/04434/2020, PTDC/FIS-AST/30389/2017]; Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) through COMPETE2020: Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao [POCI01-0145-FEDER-030389]; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions grant [792848]; Scientific and Technological Research Council of TurkeyTurkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) [TUBITAK:118F352]; NASA Explorer ProgramNational Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA); PLATO-CNES grant, WHB, WJC, and MBN thank the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for support under grant ST/R0023297/1. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by The Danish National Research Foundation (grant DNRF106). LGC thanks the support from grant FPI-SO from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO; research project SEV-2015-0548-17-2 and predoctoral contract BES-2017-082610). SM acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015-17697. ARGS acknowledges the support from NASA under grant NNX17AF27G. RAG acknowledges the support of the PLATO-CNES grant. DLB acknowledges support from the TESS GI Program under NASA awards 80NSSC18K1585 and 80NSSC19K0385. JRM acknowledges support from the Carlsberg Foundation (grant CF19-0649). VSA acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Research grant 7027-00096B). BN acknowledges postdoctoral funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation taken at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astrophysik. MSC and MD are supported in the form of work contracts funded by national funds through Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT). MSC and MD acknowledge support by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) by grants UIDB/04434/2020, UIDP/04434/2020, and PTDC/FIS-AST/30389/2017 and by Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) through COMPETE2020: Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao by grant POCI01-0145-FEDER-030389. TC acknowledges support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions grant 792848 (PULSATION). SB acknowledges NASA grants NNX16AI09G and 80NSSC19K0374. ZCO, MY, and SO acknowledge the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK:118F352) This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. Calculations in this paper had used the University of Birmingham's BlueBEAR High-Performance Computing service.1

[Context] The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is observing bright known planet-host stars across almost the entire sky. These stars have been subject to extensive ground-based observations, providing a large number of radial velocity measurements., [Aims] The objective of this work is to use the new TESS photometric observations to characterize the star λ2 Fornacis, and following this to update the parameters of the orbiting planet λ2 For b., [Methods] We measured the frequencies of the p-mode oscillations in λ2 For, and in combination with non-seismic parameters estimated the stellar fundamental properties using stellar models. Using the revised stellar properties and a time series of archival radial velocities from the UCLES, HIRES and HARPS instruments spanning almost 20 years, we refit the orbit of λ2 For b and searched the residual radial velocities for remaining variability., [Results] We find that λ2 For has a mass of 1.16 ± 0.03 M⊙ and a radius of 1.63 ± 0.04 R⊙, with an age of 6.3 ± 0.9 Gyr. This and the updated radial velocity measurements suggest a mass of λ2 For b of 16.8−1.3+1.2 M⊕, which is ∼5M⊕ less than literature estimates. We also detect an additional periodicity at 33 days in the radial velocity measurements, which is likely due to the rotation of the host star., [Conclusions] While previous literature estimates of the properties of λ2 For are ambiguous, the asteroseismic measurements place the star firmly at the early stage of its subgiant evolutionary phase. Typically only short time series of photometric data are available from TESS, but by using asteroseismology it is still possible to provide tight constraints on the properties of bright stars that until now have only been observed from the ground. This prompts a reexamination of archival radial velocity data that have been accumulated in the past few decades in order to update the characteristics of the planet hosting systems observed by TESS for which asteroseismology is possible., AHMJT and MRS have benefited from funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 803193/BEBOP). Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant agreement no.: DNRF106). ZÇO, MY, and SÖ acknowledge the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜB˙TAK:118F352). AS acknowledges support from grants ESP2017-82674-R (MICINN) and 2017-SGR-1131 (Generalitat Catalunya). TLC acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 792848 (PULSATION). This work was supported by FCT/MCTES through national funds (UID/FIS/04434/2019). MD is supported by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) by this grant UID/FIS/04434/2019. MD and MV are supported by FEDER - Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; PTDC/FIS-AST/30389/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030389 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER03038. MD is supported in the form of a work contract funded by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT). SM acknowledges support by the Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015-17697. BM and RAG acknowledge the support of the CNES/PLATO grant. DLB and LC acknowledge support from the TESS GI Program under awards 80NSSC18K1585 and 80NSSC19K0385. LGC thanks the support from grant FPI-SO from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (research project SEV-2015-0548-17-2 and predoctoral contract BES-2017-082610). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. Based in part on data acquired at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the AAT stands, the Gamilaraay people, and pay our respects to elders past and present. The data presented herein were in part obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community.

Most previous efforts to calibrate how rotation and magnetic activity depend on stellar age and mass have relied on observations of clusters, where isochrones from stellar evolution models are used to determine the properties of the ensemble. Asteroseismology employs similar models to measure the properties of an individual star by matching its normal modes of oscillation, yielding the stellar age and mass with high precision. We use 27 days of photometry from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to characterize solar-like oscillations in the G8 subgiant of the 94 Aqr triple system. the resulting stellar properties, when combined with a reanalysis of 35 yr of activity measurements from the Mount Wilson HK project, allow us to probe the evolution of rotation and magnetic activity in the system. the asteroseismic age of the subgiant agrees with a stellar isochrone fit, but the rotation period is much shorter than expected from standard models of angular momentum evolution. We conclude that weakened magnetic braking may be needed to reproduce the stellar properties, and that evolved subgiants in the hydrogen shell-burning phase can reinvigorate large-scale dynamo action and briefly sustain magnetic activity cycles before ascending the red giant branch., NSFNational Science Foundation (NSF) [AST-1812634]; NASANational Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) [NNX17AF27G, NNX16AB97G, 80NSSC20K0458, 80NSSC19K0374]; Visiting Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research; NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator Program [80NSSC18K1584, 80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0379]; NASA through the Living With A Star Program [NNX16AB76G]; TESS GI Program [80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0385]; UK Space Agency; Danish National Research FoundationDanmarks Grundforskningsfond [DNRF106]; NCAR Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral FellowshipNational Science Foundation (NSF)NSF - Directorate for Geosciences (GEO); National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF); CNES PLATO grant; German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt) under PLATO Data Center [50OO1501]; European Research Council (ERC)European Research Council (ERC) [715947]; Programme de Physique Stellaire et Planetaire; Australian Research CouncilAustralian Research Council; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) [SEV-2015-0548-17-2, BES-2017-082610]; State Research Agency (AEI) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU); European Social Fund via the Lithuanian Science Council (LMTLT)Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) [09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0103]; ESA PRODEX program; Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship [RYC-2015-17697]; Scientific and Technological Research Council of TurkeyTurkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) [TuBTAK:118F352], T.S.M. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1812634, NASA grants NNX16AB97G and 80NSSC20K0458, and a Visiting Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. Computational time at the Texas Advanced Computing Center was provided through XSEDE allocation TG-AST090107. J.v.S. acknowledges support from NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator Program (80NSSC18K1584). S.B. acknowledges NASA grant 80NSSC19K0374. D.B. acknowledges support from NASA through the Living With A Star Program (NNX16AB76G) and from the TESS GI Program under awards 80NSSC18K1585 and 80NSSC19K0385. W.J.C., W.H.B. and M.B.N. acknowledge support from the UK Space Agency. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by the Danish National Research Foundation (grant agreement No.: DNRF106). R.E. was supported by the NCAR Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. the National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. R.A.G. and B.M. acknowledge support from the CNES PLATO grant. P.G. acknowledges funding from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt) under PLATO Data Center grant 50OO1501. D.H. acknowledges support from NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator Program (80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0379). T.R. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 715947). T.A. acknowledges support from the Programme de Physique Stellaire et Planetaire. T.R.B. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council. L.G.C. acknowledges support from grant FPI-SO from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (research project SEV-2015-0548-17-2 and predoctoral contract BES-2017-082610). A.J. Acknowledges support from the State Research Agency (AEI) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU). H.K. acknowledges support from the European Social Fund via the Lithuanian Science Council (LMTLT) grant No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0103. M.N.L. acknowledges support from the ESA PRODEX program. S.M. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015-17697. Z.C.O., S.o. and M.Y. acknowledge support from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TuBTAK:118F352). A.R.G.S. acknowledges support from NASA grant NNX17AF27G. This work benefited from discussions within the international team "The Solar and Stellar Wind Connection: Heating processes and angular momentum loss" at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI).

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, is currently carrying out an all-sky search for small planets transiting bright stars. In the first year of the TESS survey, steady progress was made in achieving the mission's primary science goal of establishing bulk densities for 50 planets smaller than Neptune. During that year, TESS's observations were focused on the southern ecliptic hemisphere, resulting in the discovery of three mini-Neptunes orbiting the star TOI-125, a V=11.0 K0 dwarf. We present intensive HARPS radial velocity observations, yielding precise mass measurements for TOI-125b, TOI-125c and TOI-125d. TOI-125b has an orbital period of 4.65 days, a radius of $2.726 \pm 0.075 ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$, a mass of $ 9.50 \pm 0.88 ~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$ and is near the 2:1 mean motion resonance with TOI-125c at 9.15 days. TOI-125c has a similar radius of $2.759 \pm 0.10 ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$ and a mass of $ 6.63 \pm 0.99 ~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$, being the puffiest of the three planets. TOI-125d, has an orbital period of 19.98 days and a radius of $2.93 \pm 0.17~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$ and mass $13.6 \pm 1.2 ~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$. For TOI-125b and TOI-125d we find unusual high eccentricities of $0.19\pm 0.04$ and $0.17^{+0.08}_{-0.06}$, respectively. Our analysis also provides upper mass limits for the two low-SNR planet candidates in the system; for TOI-125.04 ($R_P=1.36 ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$, $P=$0.53 days) we find a $2\sigma$ upper mass limit of $1.6~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$, whereas TOI-125.05 ( $R_P=4.2^{+2.4}_{-1.4} ~\mathrm{R_{\rm E}}$, $P=$ 13.28 days) is unlikely a viable planet candidate with upper mass limit $2.7~\mathrm{M_{\rm E}}$. We discuss the internal structure of the three confirmed planets, as well as dynamical stability and system architecture for this intriguing exoplanet system., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

The Neptune desert is a feature seen in the radius-mass-period plane, whereby a notable dearth of short period, Neptune-like planets is found. Here we report the {\it TESS} discovery of a new short-period planet in the Neptune desert, orbiting the G-type dwarf TYC\,8003-1117-1 (TOI-132). {\it TESS} photometry shows transit-like dips at the level of $\sim$1400 ppm occurring every $\sim$2.11 days. High-precision radial velocity follow-up with HARPS confirmed the planetary nature of the transit signal and provided a semi-amplitude radial velocity variation of $\sim$11.5 m s$^{-1}$, which, when combined with the stellar mass of $0.97\pm0.06$ $M_{\odot}$, provides a planetary mass of 22.83$^{+1.81}_{-1.80}$ $M_{\oplus}$. Modeling the {\it TESS} high-quality light curve returns a planet radius of 3.43$^{+0.13}_{-0.14}$ $R_{\oplus}$, and therefore the planet bulk density is found to be 3.11$^{+0.44}_{-0.450}$ g cm$^{-3}$. Planet structure models suggest that the bulk of the planet mass is in the form of a rocky core, with an atmospheric mass fraction of 4.3$^{+1.2}_{-2.3}$\%. TOI-132 b is a {\it TESS} Level 1 Science Requirement candidate, and therefore priority follow-up will allow the search for additional planets in the system, whilst helping to constrain low-mass planet formation and evolution models, particularly valuable for better understanding the Neptune desert., 12 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome. Missing labels, Typos fixed

Full list of authors: Stock, S.; Nagel, E.; Kemmer, J.; Passegger, V. M.; Reffert, S.; Quirrenbach, A.; Caballero, J. A.; Czesla, S.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Cardona, C.; Díez-Alonso, E.; Herrero, E.; Lalitha, S.; Schlecker, M.; Tal-Or, L.; Rodríguez, E.; Rodríguez-López, C.; Ribas, I.; Reiners, A.; Amado, P. J.; Bauer, F. F.; Bluhm, P.; Cortés-Contreras, M.; González-Cuesta, L.; Dreizler, S.; Hatzes, A. P.; Henning, Th.; Jeffers, S. V.; Kaminski, A.; Kürster, M.; Lafarga, M.; López-González, M. J.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Pedraz, S.; Schöfer, P.; Schweitzer, A.; Trifonov, T.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Zechmeister, M., We announce the discovery of two planets orbiting the M dwarfs GJ 251 (0.360 ± 0.015M-) and HD 238090 (0.578 ± 0.021M-) based on CARMENES radial velocity (RV) data. In addition, we independently confirm with CARMENES data the existence of Lalande 21185 b, a planet that has recently been discovered with the SOPHIE spectrograph. All three planets belong to the class of warm or temperate super-Earths and share similar properties. The orbital periods are 14.24 d, 13.67 d, and 12.95 d and the minimum masses are 4.0 ± 0.4 M-, 6.9 ± 0.9 M-, and 2.7 ± 0.3 M- for GJ 251 b, HD 238090 b, and Lalande 21185 b, respectively. Based on the orbital and stellar properties, we estimate equilibrium temperatures of 351.0 ± 1.4 K for GJ 251 b, 469.6 ± 2.6 K for HD 238090 b, and 370.1 ± 6.8 K for Lalande 21185 b. For the latter we resolve the daily aliases that were present in the SOPHIE data and that hindered an unambiguous determination of the orbital period. We find no significant signals in any of our spectral activity indicators at the planetary periods. The RV observations were accompanied by contemporaneous photometric observations. We derive stellar rotation periods of 122.1 ± 2.2 d and 96.7 ± 3.7 d for GJ 251 and HD 238090, respectively. The RV data of all three stars exhibit significant signals at the rotational period or its first harmonic. For GJ 251 and Lalande 21185, we also find long-period signals around 600 d, and 2900 d, respectively, which we tentatively attribute to long-term magnetic cycles. We apply a Bayesian approach to carefully model the Keplerian signals simultaneously with the stellar activity using Gaussian process regression models and extensively search for additional significant planetary signals hidden behind the stellar activity. Current planet formation theories suggest that the three systems represent a common architecture, consistent with formation following the core accretion paradigm. © ESO 2020., We thank the anonymous referee, whose comments improved this work. This work was supported by the DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", project no. RE 2694/4-1. CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almeria, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucia and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Insitut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Program and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C51/2/3/4 PGC2018-098153-B-C33 AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, ESP2016-80435-C2-1R, and the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "Maria de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiologia (MDM2017-0737), the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme, and the NASA Grant NNX17AG24G. LCOGT observations were partially acquired via program number TAU2019A-002 of the Wise Observatory, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). The analysis of this work has made use of a wide variety of public available software packages that are not referenced in the manuscript: Exo-Striker (Trifonov 2019), astropy Astropy Collaboration (2018), scipy (Virtanen et al. 2020), numpy (Oliphant 2006), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), tqdm (da Costa-Luis 2019), pandas (The pandas development team 2020), and seaborn (Waskom et al. 2020).

All authors: Bluhm, P.; Luque, R.; Espinoza, N.; Pallé, E.; Caballero, J. A.; Dreizler, S.; Livingston, J. H.; Mathur, S.; Quirrenbach, A.; Stock, S.; Van Eylen, V.; Nowak, G.; López, E. D.; Csizmadia, Sz.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Schöfer, P.; Lillo-Box, J.; Oshagh, M.; González-Álvarez, E.; Amado, P. J.; Barrado, D.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Cale, B.; Chaturvedi, P.; Cifuentes, C.; Cochran, W. D.; Collins, K. A.; Collins, K. I.; Cortés-Contreras, M.; Díez Alonso, E.; El Mufti, M.; Ercolino, A.; Fridlund, M.; Gaidos, E.; García, R. A.; Georgieva, I.; González-Cuesta, L.; Guerra, P.; Hatzes, A. P.; Henning, Th.; Herrero, E.; Hidalgo, D.; Isopi, G.; Jeffers, S. V.; Jenkins, J. M.; Jensen, E. L. N.; Kábath, P.; Kaminski, A.; Kemmer, J.; Korth, J.; Kossakowski, D.; Kürster, M.; Lafarga, M.; Mallia, F.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Morales-Calderón, M.; Murgas, F.; Narita, N.; Passegger, V. M.; Pedraz, S.; Persson, C. M.; Plavchan, P.; Rauer, H.; Redfield, S.; Reffert, S.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I.; Ricker, G. R.; Rodríguez-López, C.; Santos, A. R. G.; Seager, S.; Schlecker, M.; Schweitzer, A.; Shan, Y.; Soto, M. G.; Subjak, J.; Tal-Or, L.; Trifonov, T.; Vanaverbeke, S.; Vanderspek, R.; Wittrock, J.; Zechmeister, M.; Zohrabi, F., We report the confirmation of a transiting planet around the bright weakly active M0.5 V star TOI-1235 (TYC 4384-1735-1, V ≈ 11.5 mag), whose transit signal was detected in the photometric time series of sectors 14, 20, and 21 of the TESS space mission. We confirm the planetary nature of the transit signal, which has a period of 3.44 d, by using precise RV measurements with the CARMENES, HARPS-N, and iSHELL spectrographs, supplemented by high-resolution imaging and ground-based photometry. A comparison of the properties derived for TOI-1235 b with theoretical models reveals that the planet has a rocky composition, with a bulk density slightly higher than that of Earth. In particular, we measure a mass of Mp = 5.9 ± 0.6 M⊕ and a radius of Rp = 1.69 ± 0.08 R⊕ , which together result in a density of ρp = 6.7- 1.1+ 1.3 g cm-3. When compared with other well-characterized exoplanetary systems, the particular combination of planetary radius and mass places our discovery in the radius gap, which is a transition region between rocky planets and planets with significant atmospheric envelopes. A few examples of planets occupying the radius gap are known to date. While the exact location of the radius gap for M dwarfs is still a matter of debate, our results constrain it to be located at around 1.7 R⊕ or larger at the insolation levels received by TOI-1235 b (~60 S⊕ ). This makes it an extremely interesting object for further studies of planet formation and atmospheric evolution. © ESO 2020., CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Institut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. We acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through projects RE 281/32-1, RE 1664/14-1, RE 2694/4-1, and RA714/14-1, PA525/18-1, PA525/19-1 within the Schwerpunkt SPP 1992, the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and the European FEDER/ERF funds through projects PGC2018-098153-B-C31, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3P, AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P, RYC-2015-17697, and BES-2017-082610, the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "Maria de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiologia (MDM-2017-0737), the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant 713673, the Centre national d'etudes spatiales through grants PLATO and GOLF, the Czech Academy of Sciences through grant LTT20015, NASA through grants NNX17AF27G and NNX17AG24G, JSPS KAKENHI through grants JP18H01265 and JP18H05439, JST PRESTO through grant JPMJPR1775, the Fundacion Bancaria "la Caixa" through grant INPhINIT LCF/BQ/IN17/11620033, and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. NESSI was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and the NASA Ames Research Center and built at the Ames Research Center. The authors are honored to be permitted to conduct observations on Iolkam Du'ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain within the Tohono O'odham Nation with particular significance to the Tohono O'odham people. This work made use of observations from the LCOGT network and the following software: astrasens, AstroImageJ, Banzai, batman, caracal, emcee, juliet, serval, TESS Transit Finder, tpfplotter, Yabi, and the python packages astropy, lightkurve, matplotlib, and numpy. We thank the SuperWASP team and J. Sanz-Forcada for sharing unpublished information with us. Special thanks to Ismael Pessa for all their support through this work.

We report the discovery of a planetary system orbiting TOI-763 (aka CD-39 7945), a $V=10.2$, high proper motion G-type dwarf star that was photometrically monitored by the TESS space mission in Sector 10. We obtain and model the stellar spectrum and find an object slightly smaller than the Sun, and somewhat older, but with a similar metallicity. Two planet candidates were found in the light curve to be transiting the star. Combining TESS transit photometry with HARPS high-precision radial velocity follow-up measurements confirm the planetary nature of these transit signals. We determine masses, radii, and bulk densities of these two planets. A third planet candidate was discovered serendipitously in the radial velocity data. The inner transiting planet,TOI-763 b, has an orbital period of $P_\mathrm{b}$ = 5.6~days, a mass of $M_\mathrm{b}$ = $9.8\pm0.8$ $M_\oplus$, and a radius of $R_\mathrm{b}$ = $2.37\pm0.10$ $R_\oplus$. The second transiting planet,TOI-763 c, has an orbital period of $P_\mathrm{c}$ = 12.3~days, a mass of $M_\mathrm{c}$ = $9.3\pm1.0$ $M_\oplus$, and a radius of $R_\mathrm{c}$ = $2.87\pm0.11$ $R_\oplus$. We find the outermost planet candidate to orbit the star with a period of $\sim$48~days. If confirmed as a planet it would have a minimum mass of $M_\mathrm{d}$ = $9.5\pm1.6$ $M_\oplus$. We investigated the TESS light curve in order to search for a mono transit by planet~d without success. We discuss the importance and implications of this planetary system in terms of the geometrical arrangements of planets orbiting G-type stars.

We report the discovery of a warm sub-Saturn, TOI-257b (HD 19916b), based on data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The transit signal was detected by TESS and confirmed to be of planetary origin based on radial velocity observations. An analysis of the TESS photometry, the Minerva-Australis, FEROS, and HARPS radial velocities, and the asteroseismic data of the stellar oscillations reveals that TOI-257b has a mass of MP = 0.138 ± 0.023 M J (43.9 ± 7.3, M⊕), a radius of RP = 0.639 ± 0.013 R J (7.16 ± 0.15, R ⊕), bulk density of 0.65+0.12-0.11 (cgs), and period 18.38818 +0.00085 -0.00084 days. TOI-257b orbits a bright (V = 7.612 mag) somewhat evolved late F-type star with M∗ = 1.390 ± 0.046 rm M sun, R∗ = 1.888 ± 0.033 Rsun, Teff = 6075 ± 90 rm K, and vsin i = 11.3 ± 0.5 km s-1. Additionally, we find hints for a second non-transiting sub-Saturn mass planet on a ∼71 day orbit using the radial velocity data. This system joins the ranks of a small number of exoplanet host stars (∼100) that have been characterized with asteroseismology. Warm sub-Saturns are rare in the known sample of exoplanets, and thus the discovery of TOI-257b is important in the context of future work studying the formation and migration history of similar planetary systems., Daniel Huber acknowledges support by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the TESS Guest Investigator Program (80NSSC18K1585) and by the National Science Foundation (AST-1717000). Ashley Chontos acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE 1842402). William J. Chaplin, Warrick H. Ball, Martin B. Nielsen, and Andrea Miglio. acknowledge support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council and UK Space Agency. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by The Danish National Research Foundation (Grant DNRF106). Rafael Brahm acknowledges support from National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development Post-doctoral Fellowship Project 3180246, and from the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS). H.Z. Hui Zhang is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC grants 11673011, 11933001). Andres Jordan acknowledges support from FONDECYT project 1171208 and by the Ministry for the Economy, Development, and Tourism’s Programa Iniciativa Científica Milenio through grant IC 120009, awarded to the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS). Aldo M. Serenelli is partially supported by grants ESP2017-82674-R (Spanish Government) and 2017-SGR-1131 (Generalitat de Catalunya). Andrea Miglio acknowledges support from the European Research Council Consolidator Grant funding scheme (project ASTEROCHRONOMETRY, G.A. number 772293). Rafael A. Garcia acknowledges the support of the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars grant from the Centre National d'Études Spatiales. Savita Mathur acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015-17697. Tiago L. Campante acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 792848 (PULSATION). This work was supported by Foundation of Science and Technology/Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds (UID/FIS/04434/2019). Enrico Corsaro is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 664931. L. González-Cuesta thanks the support from grant FPI-SO from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (research project SEV-2015-0548-17-2 and predoctoral contract BES-2017-082610). Sarbani Basu acknowledges NASA grant NNX16AI09G and NSF grant AST-1514676. Ian J. M. Crossfield acknowledges support from the NSF through grant AST-1824644, and from NASA through Caltech/JPL grant RSA-1610091. Tansu Daylan acknowledges support from MIT’s Kavli Institute as a Kavli postdoctoral fellow. Derek L. Buzasi acknowledges support from NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator program (80NSSC19K0385). Cenk Kayhan acknowledges support by Erciyes University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit under grant number MAP-2020-9749. Emilie Laychock and Michaela Collins acknowledge support by the National Science Foundation under grant 1559487. Victor Silva Aguirre acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Research grant 7027-00096B) and the Carlsberg Foundation (grant agreement CF19-0649).

Full author list: Grzegorz Nowak, Enric Palle, Davide Gandolfi, Hans J Deeg, Teruyuki Hirano, Oscar Barragán, Masayuki Kuzuhara, Fei Dai, Rafael Luque, Carina M Persson, Malcolm Fridlund, Marshall C Johnson, Judith Korth, John H Livingston, Sascha Grziwa, Savita Mathur, Artie P Hatzes, Jorge Prieto-Arranz, David Nespral, Diego Hidalgo, Maria Hjorth, Simon Albrecht, Vincent Van Eylen, Kristine W F Lam, William D Cochran, Massimiliano Esposito, Szilárd Csizmadia, Eike W Guenther, Petr Kabath, Pere Blay, Rafael Brahm, Andrés Jordán, Néstor Espinoza, Felipe Rojas, Núria Casasayas Barris, Florian Rodler, Roi Alonso Sobrino, Juan Cabrera, Ilaria Carleo, Alexander Chaushev, Jerome de Leon, Philipp Eigmüller, Michael Endl, Anders Erikson, Akihiko Fukui, Iskra Georgieva, Lucía González-Cuesta, Emil Knudstrup, Mikkel N Lund, Pilar Montañes Rodríguez, Felipe Murgas, Norio Narita, Prajwal Niraula, Martin Pätzold, Heike Rauer, Seth Redfield, Ignasi Ribas, Marek Skarka, Alexis M S Smith, Jano Subjak, We present an independent discovery and detailed characterization of K2-280 b, a transiting low density warm sub-Saturn in a 19.9-d moderately eccentric orbit (e = 0.35 -0.04+0.05) from K2 campaign 7. A joint analysis of high precision HARPS, HARPS-N, and FIES radial velocity measurements and K2 photometric data indicates that K2-280 b has a radius of Rb = 7.50 ± 0.44 R⊕ and a mass of Mb = 37.1 ± 5.6 M⊕, yielding a mean density of ρb = 0.48 -0.10+0.13 g cm-3. The host star is a mildly evolved G7 star with an effective temperature of Teff = 5500 ± 100 K, a surface gravity of log g = 4.21 ± 0.05 (cgs), and an iron abundance of [Fe/H] = 0.33 ± 0.08 dex, and with an inferred mass of M∗ = 1.03 ± 0.03 M⊙ and a radius of R∗ = 1.28 ± 0.07 R⊙. We discuss the importance of K2-280 b for testing formation scenarios of sub-Saturn planets and the current sample of this intriguing group of planets that are absent in the Solar system., This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP18H01265, JP18H05439, and JP16K17660, and JST PRESTO Grant Number JPMJPR1775. RB acknowledges support from FONDECYT Postdoctoral Fellowship Project 3180246. AJ acknowledges support from FONDECYT project 1171208.

Aims. We report on radial velocity time series for two M0.0 V stars, GJ 338 B and GJ 338 A, using the CARMENES spectrograph, complemented by ground-telescope photometry from Las Cumbres and Sierra Nevada observatories. We aim to explore the presence of small planets in tight orbits using the spectroscopic radial velocity technique. Methods. We obtained 159 and 70 radial velocity measurements of GJ 338 B and A, respectively, with the CARMENES visible channel between 2016 January and 2018 October. We also compiled additional relative radial velocity measurements from the literature and a collection of astrometric data that cover 200 a of observations to solve for the binary orbit. Results. We found dynamical masses of 0.64 ± 0.07 M° for GJ 338 B and 0.69 ± 0.07 M° for GJ 338 A. The CARMENES radial velocity periodograms show significant peaks at 16.61 ± 0.04 d (GJ 338 B) and 16.3-1.3+3.5 d (GJ 338 A), which have counterparts at the same frequencies in CARMENES activity indicators and photometric light curves. We attribute these to stellar rotation. GJ 338 B shows two additional, significant signals at 8.27 ± 0.01 and 24.45 ± 0.02 d, with no obvious counterparts in the stellar activity indices. The former is likely the first harmonic of the star's rotation, while we ascribe the latter to the existence of a super-Earth planet with a minimum mass of 10.27-1.38+1.47 M⊕ orbiting GJ 338 B. We have not detected signals of likely planetary origin around GJ 338 A. Conclusions. GJ 338 Bb lies inside the inner boundary of the habitable zone around its parent star. It is one of the least massive planets ever found around any member of stellar binaries. The masses, spectral types, brightnesses, and even the rotational periods are very similar for both stars, which are likely coeval and formed from the same molecular cloud, yet they differ in the architecture of their planetary systems. © ESO 2020., We wish to thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the manuscript. We are grateful to Prof. B. D. Mason for providing Washington Double Star astrometric data for the stellar binary. Based on observations collected at the German-Spanish Astronomical Center, Calar Alto, jointly operated by the Junta de Andalaucia and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC), and observations from Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) network. LCOGT observations were partially acquired via program number TAU2019A-002 of the Wise Observatory, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Koonigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Insitut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad, Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the state of Baden-Wuttemberg, the German Science Foundation (DFG), the Klaus Tschira Foundation (KTS), and by the Junta de Andalucia. This work is supported by the Spanish Ministery for Science, Innovation, and Universities through projects AYA-2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P, ESP2017-87676-C5-2R, ESP2017-87143-R. The Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia is a Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" (SEV-2017-0709). The Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB, CSIC-INTA) is a Center of Excellence "Maria de Maeztu".

Our aim is to investigate the nature and formation of brown dwarfs by adding a new well-characterised object to the small sample of less than 20 transiting brown dwarfs. One brown dwarf candidate was found by the KESPRINT consortium when searching for exoplanets in the K2 space mission Campaign 16 field. We combined the K2 photometric data with a series of multi-colour photometric observations, imaging and radial velocity measurements to rule out false positive scenarios and to determine the fundamental properties of the system. We report the discovery and characterisation of a transiting brown dwarf in a 5.17 day eccentric orbit around the slightly evolved F7V star EPIC 212036875. We find a stellar mass of 1.15+/-0.08 M$_\odot$, a stellar radius of 1.41+/-0.05 R$_\odot$, and an age of 5.1+/-0.9 Gyr. The mass and radius of the companion brown dwarf are 51+/-2 MJ and 0.83+/-0.03 RJ, respectively, corresponding to a mean density of 108+15-13 g cm-3. EPIC 212036875 b is a rare object that resides in the brown dwarf desert. In the mass-density diagram for planets, brown dwarfs and stars, we find that all giant planets and brown dwarfs follow the same trend from ~0.3 MJ to the turn-over to hydrogen burning stars at ~73 MJ. EPIC 212036875 b falls close to the theoretical model for mature H/He dominated objects in this diagram as determined by interior structure models, as well as the empirical fit. We argue that EPIC 212036875 b formed via gravitational disc instabilities in the outer part of the disc, followed by a quick migration. Orbital tidal circularisation may have started early in its history for a brief period when the brown dwarf's radius was larger. The lack of spin-orbit synchronisation points to a weak stellar dissipation parameter which implies a circularisation timescale of >23 Gyr, or suggests an interaction between the magnetic and tidal forces of the star and the brown dwarf., 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted 13 June 2019 for publication in A&A

Although M dwarfs are known for high levels of stellar activity, they are ideal targets for the search of low-mass exoplanets with the radial velocity (RV) method. We report the discovery of a planetary-mass companion around LSPM J2116+0234 (M3.0 V) and confirm the existence of a planet orbiting GJ 686 (BD+18 3421; M1.0 V). The discovery of the planet around LSPM J2116+0234 is based on CARMENES RV observations in the visual and near-infrared channels. We confirm the planet orbiting around GJ 686 by analyzing the RV data spanning over two decades of observationsfrom CARMENES VIS, HARPS-N, HARPS, and HIRES. We find planetary signals at 14.44 and 15.53 d in the RV data for LSPM J2116+0234 and GJ 686, respectively. Additionally, the RV, photometric time series, and various spectroscopic indicators show hints of variations of 42 d for LSPM J2116+0234 and 37 d for GJ 686, which we attribute to the stellar rotation periods. The orbital parameters of the planets are modeled with Keplerian fits together with correlated noise from the stellar activity. A mini-Neptune with a minimum mass of 11.8 M orbits LSPM J2116+0234 producing a RV semi-amplitude of 6.19 m s, while a super-Earth of mass 6.6 M orbits GJ 686 and produces a RV semi-amplitude of 3.0 m s. Both LSPM J2116+0234 and GJ 686 have planetary companions populating the regime of exoplanets with masses lower than 15 M and orbital periods, L.S. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under DFG DR 281/32-1. CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Insitut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 >Blue Planets around Red Stars>, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. Data were partly obtained with the MONET/South telescope of the MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes, funded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, Essen, and operated by the Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin, and the South African Astronomical Observatory. Data were partly collected with the 90 cm telescope at Sierra Nevada Observatory (SNO) operated by the Instituto de Astrofifica de Andalucia (IAA). We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, ESP2017-87676-C05-02-R, ESP2017-87143-R, BES-2017-082610, SEV-2015-0548-17-2, Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme; Agencia de Gestio d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca of the Generalitat de Catalunya through grant 2018FI_B_00188, and the Israel Science Foundation through grant 848/16. This work makes use of data from the HARPS-N Project, a collaboration between the Astronomical Observatory of the Geneva University (lead), the CfA in Cambridge, the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, the Queens University of Belfast, and the TNG-INAF Observatory; from observations obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation; from observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programmes 183.C-0437(A) and 072.C-0488(E); from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement.

We report the detection of a Neptune-mass exoplanet around the M4.0 dwarf GJ 4276 (G 232-070) based on radial velocity (RV) observations obtained with the CARMENES spectrograph. The RV variations of GJ 4276 are best explained by the presence of a planetary companion that has a minimum mass of mb sin i 16 M on a Pb = 13.35 day orbit. The analysis of the activity indicators and spectral diagnostics exclude stellar induced RV perturbations and prove the planetary interpretation of the RV signal. We show that a circular single-planet solution can be excluded by means of a likelihood ratio test. Instead, we find that the RV variations can be explained either by an eccentric orbit or interpreted as a pair of planets on circular orbits near a period ratio of 2:1. Although the eccentric single-planet solution is slightly preferred, our statistical analysis indicates that none of these two scenarios can be rejected with high confidence using the RV time series obtained so far. Based on the eccentric interpretation, we find that GJ 4276 b is the most eccentric (eb = 0.37) exoplanet around an M dwarf with such a short orbital period known today.© ESO 2019., CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Insitut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano- Alemaan), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Science through projects AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, AYA2015-69350-C32-P, ESP2017-87676-C05-02-R, ESP2014-54362P, and ESP2017-87143R, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 >Blue Planets around Red Stars>, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. This work made use of observations collected at Sierra Nevada Observatory (SNO) supported by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, CSIC, and from the LCOGT network. EN acknowledges support through DFG project CZ 222/1-1. S.C. acknowledges support from DFG project SCH 1382/2-1 and SCHM 1032/66-1. G.A.-E. research is funded via the STFC Consolidated Grants ST/P000592/1, and a Perren foundation grant.

Context. Small planets around low-mass stars often show orbital periods in a range that corresponds to the temperate zones of their host stars which are therefore of prime interest for planet searches. Surface phenomena such as spots and faculae create periodic signals in radial velocities and in observational activity tracers in the same range, so they can mimic or hide true planetary signals. Aims. We aim to detect Doppler signals corresponding to planetary companions, determine their most probable orbital configurations, and understand the stellar activity and its impact on different datasets. Methods. We analyzed 22 yr of data of the M1.5 V-type star Gl 49 (BD+61 195) including HARPS-N and CARMENES spectrographs, complemented by APT2 and SNO photometry. Activity indices are calculated from the observed spectra, and all datasets are analyzed with periodograms and noise models. We investigated how the variation of stellar activity imprints on our datasets. We further tested the origin of the signals and investigate phase shifts between the different sets. To search for the best-fit model we maximize the likelihood function in a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach. Results. As a result of this study, we are able to detect the super-Earth Gl 49b with a minimum mass of 5.6 M. It orbits its host star with a period of 13.85 d at a semi-major axis of 0.090 au and we calculate an equilibrium temperature of 350 K and a transit probability of 2.0%. The contribution from the spot-dominated host star to the different datasets is complex, and includes signals from the stellar rotation at 18.86 d, evolutionary timescales of activity phenomena at 40-80 d, and a long-term variation of at least four years.© 2019 ESO., M.P., I.R., J.C. M,D.B., E.H, and M.L., acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through grant ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA program. G.S. acknowledges financial support from >Accordo ASI-INAF> No. 2013-016-R. 0 July 9, 2013 and July 9, 2015. The Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) is operated on the island of La Palma by the INAF -Fundacion Galileo Galilei at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC). The HARPS-N Project is a collaboration between the Astronomical Observatory of the Geneva University (lead), the CfA in Cambridge, the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, the Queen's University of Belfast, and the TNG-INAF Observatory. CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-PlanckGesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Insitut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Science through projects RYC2013-14875, AYA2015-69350C3-2-P, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2017-87143R, ESP2017-87676-C05-1/2/5-R, and AYA2017-86389-P, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Program and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 >Blue Planets around Red Stars>, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. Additional support was provided by the European Union FP7/2007-2013 program under grant agreement No. 313014 (ETAEARTH), the Progetto Premiale INAF 2015 FRONTIER, and the >Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa> award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709).

We report the discovery of a super-Earth and a sub-Neptune transiting the star HD 15337 (TOI-402, TIC 120896927), a bright (V=9) K1 dwarf observed by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in Sectors 3 and 4. We combine the TESS photometry with archival HARPS spectra to confirm the planetary nature of the transit signals and derive the masses of the two transiting planets. With an orbital period of 4.8 days, a mass of 7.51(+1.09)(-1.01) M_Earth, and a radius of 1.64+/-0.06 R_Earth, HD 15337b joins the growing group of short-period super-Earths known to have a rocky terrestrial composition. The sub-Neptune HD 15337c has an orbital period of 17.2 days, a mass of 8.11(+1.82)(-1.69) M_Earth, and a radius of 2.39+/-0.12 R_Earth, suggesting that the planet might be surrounded by a thick atmospheric envelope. The two planets have similar masses and lie on opposite sides of the radius gap, and are thus an excellent testbed for planet formation and evolution theories. Assuming that HD 15337c hosts a hydrogen-dominated envelope, we employ a recently developed planet atmospheric evolution algorithm in a Bayesian framework to estimate the history of the high-energy (extreme ultraviolet and X-ray) emission of the host star. We find that at an age of 150 Myr, the star possessed on average between 3.7 and 127 times the high-energy luminosity of the current Sun., Comment: Published in ApJ Letters

The design and construction of CARMENES has been presented at previous SPIE conferences. It is a next-generation radial-velocity instrument at the 3.5m telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory, which was built by a consortium of eleven Spanish and German institutions. CARMENES consists of two separate échelle spectrographs covering the wavelength range from 0.52 to 1.71¿m at a spec-tral resolution of R < 80,000, fed by fibers from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. CARMENES saw ¿First Light¿ on Nov 9, 2015. During the commissioning and initial operation phases, we established basic performance data such as throughput and spectral resolution. We found that our hollow-cathode lamps are suitable for precise wavelength calibration, but their spectra contain a number of lines of neon or argon that are so bright that the lamps cannot be used in simultaneous exposures with stars. We have therefore adopted a calibration procedure that uses simultaneous star / Fabry Pérot etalon exposures in combination with a cross-calibration between the etalons and hollow-cathode lamps during daytime. With this strategy it has been possible to achieve 1-2 m/s precision in the visible and 5-10 m/s precision in the near-IR; further improvements are expected from ongoing work on temperature control, calibration procedures and data reduction. Comparing the RV precision achieved in different wavelength bands, we find a ¿sweet spot¿ between 0.7 and 0.8¿m, where deep TiO bands provide rich RV information in mid-M dwarfs. This is in contrast to our pre-survey models, which predicted comparatively better performance in the near-IR around 1¿m, and explains in part why our near-IR RVs do not reach the same precision level as those taken with the visible spectrograph. We are now conducting a large survey of 340 nearby M dwarfs (with an average distance of only 12pc), with the goal of finding terrestrial planets in their habitable zones. We have detected the signatures of several previously known or suspected planets and also discovered several new planets. We find that the radial velocity periodograms of many M dwarfs show several significant peaks. The development of robust methods to distinguish planet signatures from activity-induced radial velocity jitter is therefore among our priorities. Due to its large wavelength coverage, the CARMENES survey is generating a unique data set for studies of M star atmospheres, rotation, and activity. The spectra cover important diagnostic lines for activity (H alpha, Na I D1 and D2, and the Ca II infrared triplet), as well as FeH lines, from which the magnetic field can be inferred. Correlating the time series of these features with each other, and with wavelength-dependent radial velocities, provides excellent handles for the discrimination between planetary companions and stellar radial velocity jitter. These data are also generating new insight into the physical properties of M dwarf atmospheres, and the impact of activity and flares on the habitability of M star planets. © 2018 SPIE., CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Insitut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Science, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Program and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia.

Surveys have shown that super-Earth and Neptune-mass exoplanets are more frequent than gas giants around low-mass stars, as predicted by the core accretion theory of planet formation. We report the discovery of a giant planet around the very-low-mass star GJ 3512, as determined by optical and near-infrared radial-velocity observations. The planet has a minimum mass of 0.46 Jupiter masses, very high for such a small host star, and an eccentric 204-day orbit. Dynamical models show that the high eccentricity is most likely due to planet-planet interactions. We use simulations to demonstrate that the GJ 3512 planetary system challenges generally accepted formation theories, and that it puts constraints on the planet accretion and migration rates. Disk instabilities may be more efficient in forming planets than previously thought.Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science, This research was supported by the following programs, grants, and fellowships: Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) ESP2014-54062-R, ESP2014-54362P, AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P, BES-2015-074542, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, ESP2016-76076-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, ESP2017-87143-R, ESP2017-87676-C05-02-R, ESP-2017-87676-2-2, RYC-2012-09913 (>Ramon y Cajal> program), and FPU15/01476; Israel Science Foundation grant 848/16, CONICYT-FONDECYT/Chile Postdoctorado 3180405; Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft-un Raumfahrt (DLR) 50OW0204 and 50OO1501; Italian Minister of Instruction, University and Research (MIUR), FFABR 2017; University of Rome Tor Vergata, >Mission: Sustainability 2016> fund; European Research Council under the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program 694513; Mexican national council for science and technology CONACYT, CVU 448248; the >Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa> award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709); Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA program; Fondo Europeo de Desarollo Regional (FEDER); German Science Foundation (DFG) Research Unit FOR2544 >Blue Planets around Red Stars> and Priority Programs SPP 1833, >Building a Habitable Earth> and SPP 1992, >Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets> NSF grants PHY17-48958 and PHY-1607761; Swiss National Science Foundation under grant BSGIO_155816 >PlaneltsInTime' and within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS; Queen Mary University of London Scholarship and STFC Consolidated Grant ST/P000592/1; Spanish MCIU FPI-SO predoctoral contract BES-2017-082610 and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

We report the discovery of a warm Neptune and a hot sub-Neptune transiting TOI-421 (BD-14 1137, TIC 94986319), a bright (V = 9.9) G9 dwarf star in a visual binary system observed by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space mission in Sectors 5 and 6. We performed ground-based follow-up observations-comprised of Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope transit photometry, NIRC2 adaptive optics imaging, and FIbre-fed Echelle Spectrograph, CORALIE, High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, High Resolution echelle Spectrometer, and Planet Finder Spectrograph high-precision Doppler measurements-and confirmed the planetary nature of the 16 day transiting candidate announced by the TESS team. We discovered an additional radial velocity signal with a period of five days induced by the presence of a second planet in the system, which we also found to transit its host star. We found that the inner mini-Neptune, TOI-421 b, has an orbital period of P-b = 5.19672 +/- 0.00049 days, a mass of M-b = 7.17 +/- 0.66 M-circle plus, and a radius of R-b = R-circle plus, whereas the outer warm Neptune, TOI-421 c, has a period of P-c = 16.06819 +/- 0.00035 days, a mass of M-c = 16.42(-1.04)(+1.06)M(circle plus), a radius of R-c = 5.09(-0.15)(+0.16)R(circle plus), and a density of rho(c) = 0.685(-0.072)(+0.080) cm(-3). With its characteristics, the outer planet (rho(c) = 0.685(-0.0072)(+0.080) cm(-3)) is placed in the intriguing class of the super-puffy mini-Neptunes. TOI-421 b and TOI-421 c are found to be well-suited for atmospheric characterization. Our atmospheric simulations predict significant Ly alpha transit absorption, due to strong hydrogen escape in both planets, as well as the presence of detectable CH4 in the atmosphere of TOI-421 c if equilibrium chemistry is assumed.