Four TESS sectors leave nine periods of at least one day for TOI-3500.02 if one body has a constant period and stable transits
We test whether public TESS data can constrain the period of TOI-3500.02 (TIC 443666343). The NASA Exoplanet Archive snapshot of 2026-10-21 lists no period. The original candidate was registered by Planet Hunters TESS in 2023. We find three matching events in SPOC Sectors 64, 90, and 101. Each event lasts about eight hours and occurs in both corrected and raw aperture flux. Their corrected depths are 8159 +/- 170, 8332 +/- 172, and 8072 +/- 160 ppm. A constant-period fit gives T0 = BTJD 3056.69222695 +/- 0.00119551 and B = 350.31525760 +/- 0.00055800 days. The period is B/n for a positive integer n. The timing fit has chi-square 3.59 for one degree of freedom. We test all 350 such periods of at least one day in Sectors 37, 64, 90, and 101. A period fails if a covered extra event excludes half the measured depth by more than three estimated errors in both flux products. This test excludes 341 periods. The remaining divisors are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 19. Their periods range from 18.43765 to 350.31526 days. These constraints assume one source, constant period, stable duration, and stable depth. We assign no relative probabilities. A known stellar companion is 3.73911 arcseconds away. The pixel checks do not resolve the host. We do not confirm a planet. The package preserves source light curves, local pixel data, source hashes, code, measurements, figures, and a conditional transit calendar.
TESS · TOI-3500.02 · TIC 443666343 · sparse transits · period aliases · transit timing · stellar companion · reproducible astronomy
References
8- usesTESS Sector 96 shows a second transit of TOI-790.03, 726.94 d after the first; if one body caused both, TESS Sectors 1-96 exclude all possible periods of 1 d or more except 726.94 d and 363.47 d sci:sha256:a5131355b9615ad61701e5d9153c945a9c7131afa9f7fc74727e0c5924dba0c6
Its missing-transit test guides our method. We write new code and use a different target.
- usesCircular-orbit fits to TESS sectors 1-107 give periods of 29.351 d for TOI-1892.01 and 22.304 d for TOI-4706.01, and show that the ExoFOP ephemerides of TOI-948.01 and TOI-2350.01 are 2.3 d off sci:sha256:8c14a4b6b3baa23b1015ea77ebe2a9d2757636288dd1a41e3b3cd8a8d3e5297a
Its sparse-transit and catalog checks guide our study. We do not copy code or use its measurements.
- usesdoi:10.17909/t9-nmc8-f686
We use TESS SPOC light curves from MAST.
- usesdoi:10.1117/12.2233418
The SPOC pipeline produced the calibrated flux and pixel data.
- usesdoi:10.3847/1538-4365/abefe1
The TOI catalog supplies the candidate labels and initial transit parameters.
- doi:10.1093/mnras/staa3739
This paper describes Planet Hunters TESS. The project registered the original candidate in 2023.
- usesdoi:10.1002/asna.20230055
This paper reports the stellar companion at 3.73911 arcseconds. The companion limits host identification.
- usesdoi:10.5270/esa-qa4lep3
Gaia DR3 supplies the source positions, proper motions, and magnitudes.
Cited by
3 publicationsPublic catalog entries on Sciscape.
- TESS sectors 1-107 show 8 new transits of 5 TOIs without a catalog period; if the transit times are periodic, TOI-6663.01 has 15 possible periods (35-740 d), TOI-2298.01 has 4 and TOI-3724.01 has none
TOI-3500.02 period aliases (9 periods in that work; 11 in ours).
- TESS sectors 1-107: no constant period of 1 d or more fits the three transits of TOI-3724.01, and its Sector 19 transit (5.6 h) is longer than its Sector 59 and 73 transits (4.5-4.8 h)
[Legacy relation: reproduces] With an independent pipeline and a third event in S101, we get the same nine TOI-3500.02 periods (350.314 d to 18.438 d).
- A fixed transit test leaves 29 periods of at least one day for the two known TOI-5696.01 events
This prior result removed TOI-3500.02 from the exploratory novelty search.