Mario Damasso's research while affiliated with National Institute of Astrophysics and other places

Publications (30)

Article
We report an analysis of the TESS light curve of the nearby M dwarf Gl 514 that was observed during Sector 50. We search for a transit of the likely super-Earth Gl 514 b that was detected in 2022 in radial velocity data. The planet moves on an eccentric orbit that partly resides within the habitable zone of its host. According to the predictions, a...
Article
We present mass and radius measurements of K2-79b and K2-222b, two transiting exoplanets orbiting active G-type stars observed with HARPS-N and K2. Their respective 10.99 day and 15.39 day orbital periods fall near periods of signals induced by stellar magnetic activity. The two signals might therefore interfere and lead to an inaccurate estimate o...
Preprint
Full-text available
Recent astronomical observations obtained with the Kepler and TESS missions and their related ground-based follow-ups revealed an abundance of exoplanets with a size intermediate between Earth and Neptune. A low occurrence rate of planets has been identified at around twice the size of Earth, known as the exoplanet radius gap or radius valley. We e...
Article
Full-text available
Recent astronomical observations obtained with the Kepler and TESS missions and their related ground-based follow-ups revealed an abundance of exoplanets with a size intermediate between Earth and Neptune (1 R ⊕ ≤ R ≤ 4 R ⊕ ). A low occurrence rate of planets has been identified at around twice the size of Earth (2 × R ⊕ ), known as the exoplanet r...
Preprint
Full-text available
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophysi...
Preprint
Full-text available
We present mass and radius measurements of K2-79b and K2-222b, two transiting exoplanets orbiting active G-type stars. Their respective 10.99d and 15.39d orbital periods fall near periods of signals induced by stellar magnetic activity. The two signals might therefore interfere and lead to an inaccurate estimate of exoplanet mass. We present a meth...
Article
Full-text available
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophysi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Current theories of planetary evolution predict that infant giant planets have large radii and very low densities before they slowly contract to reach their final size after about several hundred million years 1, 2. These theoretical expectations remain untested to date, despite the increasing number of exoplanetary discoveries, as the detection an...
Article
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The atmospheres of gaseous giant exoplanets orbiting close to their parent stars (hot Jupiters) have been probed for nearly two decades1,2. They allow us to investigate the chemical and physical properties of planetary atmospheres under extreme irradiation conditions3. Previous observations of hot Jupiters as they transit in front of their host sta...
Preprint
The atmospheres of gaseous giant exoplanets orbiting close to their parent stars (hot Jupiters) have been probed for nearly two decades. They allow us to investigate the chemical and physical properties of planetary atmospheres under extreme irradiation conditions. Previous observations of hot Jupiters as they transit in front of their host stars h...
Preprint
Both young stars and multi-planet systems are primary objects that allow us to study, understand and constrain planetary formation and evolution theories. We validate the physical nature of two Neptune-type planets transiting TOI-942 (TYC 5909-319-1), a previously unacknowledged young star (50+30-20 Myr) observed by the TESS space mission in Sector...
Article
Small planets on close-in orbits tend to exhibit envelope mass fractions of either effectively zero or up to a few percent depending on their size and orbital period. Models of thermally-driven atmospheric mass loss and of terrestrial planet formation in a gas-poor environment make distinct predictions regarding the location of this rocky/non-rocky...
Article
We present the confirmation of two new planets transiting the nearby mid-M dwarf LTT 3780 (TIC 36724087, TOI-732, V = 13.07, K_s = 8.204, R_s = 0.374 R⊙, M_s = 0.401 M⊙, d = 22 pc). The two planet candidates are identified in a single Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite sector and validated with reconnaissance spectroscopy, ground-based photometr...
Preprint
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We report the discovery of two transiting exoplanets from the WASP survey, WASP-150b and WASP-176b. WASP-150b is an eccentric ($e$ = 0.38) hot Jupiter on a 5.6 day orbit around a $V$ = 12.03, F8 main-sequence host. The host star has a mass and radius of 1.4 $\rm M_{\odot}$ and 1.7 $\rm R_{\odot}$ respectively. WASP-150b has a mass and radius of 8.5...
Preprint
Small planets on close-in orbits tend to exhibit envelope mass fractions of either effectively zero or up to a few percent depending on their size and orbital period. Models of thermally-driven atmospheric mass loss and of terrestrial planet formation in a gas-poor environment make distinct predictions regarding the location of this rocky/non-rocky...
Article
Using light curves obtained by the K2 mission, we study the relation between stellar rotation and magnetic activity with special focus on stellar flares. Our sample comprises 56 bright and nearby M dwarfs observed by K2 during campaigns C0-C18 in long- and short-cadence mode. We derive rotation periods for 46 M dwarfs and measure photometric activi...
Preprint
Using light curves obtained by the K2 mission, we study the relation between stellar rotation and magnetic activity with special focus on stellar flares. Our sample comprises 56 bright and nearby M dwarfs observed by K2 during campaigns C0-C18 in long- and short-cadence mode. We derive rotation periods for 46 M dwarfs and measure photometric activi...
Preprint
Proxima c, a candidate second planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, was detected with the radial velocity method. The announced long orbital period (5.21$^{+0.26}_{-0.22}$ years), and small semi-amplitude of the induced Doppler signal (1.2$\pm$0.4 m/s), make this detection challenging and the target worthy of a follow-up in the next years. We intend to...
Preprint
We present the confirmation of two new planets transiting the nearby mid-M dwarf LTT 3780 (TIC 36724087, TOI-732, $V=13.07$, $K_s=8.204$, $R_s$=0.374 R$_{\odot}$, $M_s$=0.401 M$_{\odot}$, d=22 pc). The two planet candidates are identified in a single TESS sector and are validated with reconnaissance spectroscopy, ground-based photometric follow-up,...
Article
Full-text available
Our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, hosts a temperate terrestrial planet. We detected in radial velocities evidence of a possible second planet with minimum mass mc sin ic = 5.8 ± 1.9M⊕ and orbital period P c = 5.21 - 0.22 + 0.26 years. The analysis of photometric data and spectro-scopic activity diagnostics does not explain the signal i...
Preprint
The radii and orbital periods of 4000+ confirmed/candidate exoplanets have been precisely measured by the Kepler mission. The radii show a bimodal distribution, with two peaks corresponding to smaller planets (likely rocky) and larger intermediate-size planets, respectively. While only the masses of the planets orbiting the brightest stars can be d...
Article
The radii and orbital periods of 4,000+ confirmed/candidate exoplanets have been precisely measured by the Kepler mission. The radii show a bimodal distribution, with two peaks corresponding to smaller planets (likely rocky) and larger intermediate-size planets, respectively. While only the masses of the planets orbiting the brightest stars can be...
Article
K2-291 is a solar-type star with a radius of R ∗ = 0.899 ±0.034 R and mass of M ∗ = 0.934 ±0.038 M . From the K2 C13 data, we found one super-Earth planet (R p = 1.589 -0.072+0.095 R ⊕ ) transiting this star on a short period orbit (P = 2.225177 -6.8e-5+6.6e-5 days). We followed this system up with adaptive-optic imaging and spectroscopy to derive...
Article
Full-text available
Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital paramete...
Article
Full-text available
The discovery of almost two thousand exoplanets has revealed an unexpectedly diverse planet population. We see gas giants in few-day orbits, whole multi-planet systems within the orbit of Mercury, and new populations of planets with masses between that of the Earth and Neptune—all unknown in the Solar System. Observations to date have shown that ou...

Citations

... Various follow-up theoretical and observational efforts such as Venturini et al. (2020), Mousis et al. (2020), Mazevet et al. (2019), Haldemann et al. (2020), Otegi et al. (2020), Kite et al. (2019Kite et al. ( , 2020, Kite & Schaefer (2021), Alessi et al. (2020), King & Wheatley (2020), Lee & Connors (2020), Rao et al. (2021) Kruijssen et al. (2020), Kane et al. (2020), Luque et al. (2020), Waalkes et al. (2020), David et al. (2020), Kreidberg et al. (2020), McDonald et al. (2021), and Nava et al. (2022) have since been conducted to investigate the nature of this radius valley and, in particular, its correlation with the presence of H 2 O and/or a gas envelope. ...
... The main limitations of the energy-limited escape modelling, the role of magnetic fields and stellar wind interactions are given in Poppenhaeger et al. (2021) (Section 4.3). Some additional simplifying assumptions that we make here and that are explored in more realistic setups by other authors are: circular orbits and no planet migration after disk dispersal (see Attia et al. (2021) for eccentricity and migration effects on photoevaporative mass loss at later ages); lack of planetary compositional diversity (see Venturini et al. (2020) or Zeng et al. (2021) for the impact of compositional differences, like the inclusion of cosmic ices and water on the radius distribution); lack of a photon-limited escape regime (e.g. Owen & Alvarez 2016;Lampón et al. 2021). ...
... AML observations have also been proposed as follow ups for PBH candidates detected via PML methods in order to measure the properties of the lens with greater precision [36][37][38]. Besides PBHs, AML can be used to set constraints on exotic ultra-compact mini-clusters halos (UCMCHs) [39,40], and also on on more conventional DM sub-halos [41,42]. ...
... More recently, studies 6,[11][12][13][14][15] explored the possibilities of similar hurdles in the field of exoplanetary sciences and highlighted the large discrepancies between synthetic spectra generated from different precomputed cross-sections, supporting the need for additional experimental works 16 . In 2021, a study detected atmospheric constituents of a hot Jupiter via the cross-correlation technique using different sets of cross-sections, each yielding a different detection significance 17 . ...
... In operation since 2018, TESS has observed 85% of the celestial sphere, staring for at least ∼27 days at over 50 sectors covered so far (24°× 96°per sector). The TESS survey has already unveiled more than 5000 candidate exoplanets of which more than 200 have been confirmed as new transiting planetary systems, including small planets around M-dwarf hosts (e.g., TOI-270, Günther et al. 2019;LP 791-18, Crossfield et al. 2019;L 98-59, Cloutier et al. 2019; LTT 1445 A, Winters et al. 2019;LTT 3780, Cloutier et al. 2020a;TOI-1235, Cloutier et al. 2020b; TOI-700, Gilbert et al. 2020;TOI-1266, Demory et al. 2020LP 714-47, Dreizler et al. 2020;TOI-776, Luque et al. 2021). ...
... The first is K2-18 b (Montet et al. 2015;Cloutier et al. 2017), which we use for the majority of this work. Orbiting a J = 9.8 mag M dwarf, K2-18 b has a mass of 8 (Nowak et al. 2020;Cloutier et al. 2020) and TOI-776 b and c (Luque et al. 2021). Our second case is the more recently-discovered TOI-732 c/LTT 3780 c (Nowak et al. 2020;Cloutier et al. 2020), with a mass of 6.29 +0.63 −0.61 M ⊕ and radius of 2.42 +0.10 −0.10 R ⊕ , orbiting a relatively brighter J = 9.0 mag host star (Nowak et al. 2020). ...
... While Fossati et al. 2022 presented an analysis of the optical portion of these observations together with a search for He I, in this work we mainly exploit the nIR GIANO-B data, in order to search for molecules in the atmosphere of this planet. These observations are part of the GAPS2 22 programme, aimed at exploring the diversity of planetary systems via the detection of planets around young stars (e.g., Carleo et al. 2020;Damasso et al. 2020), the search for inner small planetary companions to outer long-period giants (e.g., Barbato et al. 2020), and the observation and Guilluy et al. 2020;Pino et al. 2020;Giacobbe et al. 2021;Guilluy et al. 2022). GIANO-B covers a wavelength range of 0.95-2.45 ...
... Using equation 1 of Dobbs-Dixon et al. (2004) and an estimate for of 10 6 in line with the estimation from Yoder & Peale (1981), the time scale of eccentricity damping via tidal disturbance is on the order of 15.7 Gyr, well above the estimated age of 3.1 +1.0 −0.8 Gyr. WASP-186b therefore joins the small group of massive and eccentric planets, including WASP-150b Cooke et al. (2020), WASP-162b (Hellier et al. 2019), HATS-41b (Bento et al. 2018), XO-3b (Johns-Krull et al. 2008), and HAT-P-2b (Bakos et al. 2007). Finally, the planet has an equilibrium temperature ( ) of 1348 +23 −22 K, assuming zero albedo and isotropic blackbody re-radiation. ...
... Stars with fast rotation will have more magnetic energy available; therefore, these results are consistent with faster rotators exhibiting more active behaviours (Davenport 2016;Allred et al. 2015;Newton et al. 2017;Yang & Liu 2019;Günther et al. 2020;Martínez et al. 2019). Specific activity-rotation studies on cool stars, such as those carried out by West et al. (2015), Stelzer et al. (2016), Medina et al. (2020), and Raetz et al. (2020), have also found that fast rotating stars flare more frequently than slow rotators. Seli et al. (2021) found that ∼50 per cent of their fast-rotating ( < 5 days) late-M stars flared, compared to ∼70 per cent of our sample with the same periods. ...
... Kerv ella, Th év enin & Lovis 2017b ). Proxima actually has an Earth-mass planet in the nominal habitable zone, inferred from a radial-velocity perturbation of ∼ 1 m s −1 (Anglada-Escud é et al. 2016 ), and a further planet candidate (Damasso et al. 2020 ). Ho we ver, the erupti ve brightness changes of the star make the Proxima b planet less promising as habitable. ...