Dr. Rabus, Markus

The imminent launch of space telescopes designed to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets has prompted new efforts to prioritize the thousands of transiting planet candidates for follow-up characterization. We report the detection and confirmation of TOI-1842b, a warm Saturn identified by TESS and confirmed with ground-based observations from Minerva-Australis, NRES, and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope. This planet has a radius of R J, a mass of M J, an orbital period of days, and an extremely low density (? = 0.252 0.091 g cm-3). TOI-1842b has among the best known combinations of large atmospheric scale height (893 km) and host-star brightness (J = 8.747 mag), making it an attractive target for atmospheric characterization. As the host star is beginning to evolve off the main sequence, TOI-1842b presents an excellent opportunity to test models of gas giant reinflation. The primary transit duration of only 4.3 hr also makes TOI-1842b an easily-schedulable target for further ground-based atmospheric characterization. © 2022. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.