Title of programme: HIP 67522 b – a Hot Jupiter that triggers flares on its host
Abstract: The habitability of exoplanets depends crucially on the space weather they experience. A planet orbiting _inwards_ of the habitable zone is a natural probe of the magnetized winds and energetic radiation traveling towards a potentially habitable planet. When a planet orbits close enough to its host, it can perturb the star’s magnetic field, setting off energetic flares in the stellar corona. In the optical, these flares appear as recurrent brightenings in phase with the orbit. If we measure such flares, we immediately know that the planet moves inside the closed-field corona, critical information for space weather modelers. To measure this planet-induced flaring, we have to find flares occurring in excess of intrinsic stellar flaring. This is done by testing for deviations from a random distribution of flares with the orbital phase of the planet. HIP 67522, a 17 Myr Sun with a Hot Jupiter in a 7-day orbit, detected in 2020, has the ideal properties to exhibit such excess flares. But there is more: In recent TESS data, HIP 67522 flared a total of four times. Each time, the flare took place within 10h after transit, the same 4% of the planet’s orbit. This is very unlikely to happen if these flares occurred randomly. We propose to observe HIP 67522 using CHEOPS' high sensitivity for flares for 16 visits for 8 orbits each during the critical 4% of HIP 67522 b's orbit to measure, for the first time, planet induced flares at high significance.
Temporal Coverage
2024-03-23T03:34:00Z / 2024-03-23T16:45:00Z
Version
3.0
Mission Description
CHEOPS (Benz et al., https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-020-09679-4) is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission in partnership with Switzerland with important contributions to the payload and the ground segment from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The satellite has a single payload comprising an ultra-high precision photometer covering the 330 - 1100 nm wavelength range in a single photometric band. Observations are made as part of the Guaranteed Time Observing Programme that is formulated by the CHEOPS Science Team, and the Guest Observers Programme through which the Community at large can apply for CHEOPS time.
