The SHERLOCK pipeline: new exoplanet candidates in the WASP-16, HA T-P-27, HA T-P-26, and TOI-2411 systems

Abstract

The launches of N ASA K epler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite ( TESS ) missions have significantly enhanced the interest in the exoplanet field during the last 15 yr, providing a vast amount of public data that are being exploited by the community thanks to the continuous development of new analysis tools. However, using these tools is not straightforward, and users must dive into different codes, input–output formats, and methodologies, hindering an efficient and robust exploration of the available data. We present the SHERLOCK pipeline, an end-to-end public software that allows the users to easily explore observations from space-based missions such as TESS or Kepler to reco v er known planets and candidates issued by the official pipelines and search for new planetary candidates that remained unnoticed. The pipeline incorporates all the steps to search for transit-like features, v et potential candidates, pro vide statistical validation, conduct a Bayesian fitting, and compute observ ational windo ws from ground-based observatories. Its performance is tested against a catalogue of known and confirmed planets from the TESS mission, trying to reco v er the official TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs), e xplore the e xistence of companions that hav e been missed, and release them as new planetary candidates. SHERLOCK demonstrated an excellent performance, recovering 98 per cent of the TOIs and confirmed planets in our test sample and finding new candidates. Specifically, we release four new planetary candidates around the systems WASP-16 (with P ∼10.46 d and R ∼2.20 R ⊕), HAT-P-27 (with P ∼1.20 d and R ∼4.33 R ⊕), HAT-P-26 (with P ∼6.59 d and R ∼1.97 R ⊕), and TOI-2411 (with P ∼18.75 d and R ∼2.88 R ⊕).