Eight TESS sectors give a weak optical phase signal for TOI-6324 b with fixed circular orbit geometry

We tested the weak optical phase signal reported for TOI-6324 b with eight public TESS sectors. We fit signed phase terms and daily quadratic trends at the same time. We fixed the circular orbit geometry from the discovery paper. The day-to-night contrast is 49.3 ± 18.5 parts per million (ppm) when night flux is zero. The approximate 95% interval is 13.1 to 85.5 ppm. Sector 85, which the discovery paper did not use, gives −56.1 ± 60.8 ppm. This sector does not confirm the positive signal, but it also does not establish a change. Removing sector 78 reduces the pooled contrast to 29.5 ± 19.6 ppm. A fit with a separate eclipse depth gives 7.4 ± 27.8 ppm for that depth. Changes to trend length, transit mask, orbit grouping, flux type, and geometry retain a weak pooled positive estimate. The data do not establish a stable planetary phase curve or tidal deformation. We supply the original light curves, provenance, signed fits, figures, source code, and offline reproduction instructions. Injections test the delivered-flux analysis; they do not test signal loss in the upstream pipeline.

TOI-6324 b · TESS · optical phase curve · secondary eclipse · public data · repeatability · cluster covariance