The goals of our campaign are (1) obtain high-resolution images of the putative host STARS of candidate planets (2) place limits on the presence of unseen stellar companions (3) reveal companion STARS…

This federal contract award, with ID 80NSSC20K0250, was granted by the Shared Services Center (an agency of NASA) to the Regents of the University of California, doing business as the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). The $481,134.00 grant is for a research project with the following key goals: (1) obtain high-resolution images of potential host stars for candidate planets, (2) place limits on unseen stellar companions, (3) reveal companion stars, (4) determine physical associations between companion and target stars, (5) characterize multi-star systems hosting transiting planets, and (6) identify which stars in multi-star systems host the transiting planets. The research will support the TESS mission by improving planet radius estimates and validating TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). UC Berkeley plans to make the data publicly accessible and present the findings in peer-reviewed publications. This grant does not have a set-aside designation, indicating it was awarded through open competition.

The goals of our campaign are (1) obtain high-resolution images of the putative host STARS of candidate planets (2) place limits on the presence of unseen stellar companions (3) reveal companion STARS in or near the target aperture (4) determine whether companion and target STARS are physically associated by acquiring multi-band or multi-epoch photometry (5) characterize the properties of multi-star systems hosting transiting planets (6) identify which STARS in multi-star systems host the transiting planets. We will then account for flux dilution from detected stellar companions and improve planet radius estimates. Next, we will incorporate our follow up observations into our TOI validation framework to determine which tois are planets and which are false positives. For planet host STARS, we will obtain spectra to determine metallicities and refine estimates of stellar parameters. Finally, we will use the resulting catalog of well-characterized cool dwarf planetary systems as an input to our separate tess guest investigator program to probe the frequency of cool dwarf planets as a function of planetary and stellar properties. We will support the community by posting our data to the publicly-accessible exofop-tess website and presenting results in peer-reviewed publications. Our catalog of cool dwarf planetary systems will enable numerous follow-up studies into the nature of planetary systems.