Pre-registration: TESS Sector 110 test of two transit-like signals in TIC 4206066
This record pre-registers a test of two transit-like signals found in archival TESS observations of the nearby K dwarf TIC 4206066: signal A (period 3.18 d) and signal B (period 11.13 d). TESS will observe the star again in Sector 110 from 2026-10-31 to 2026-11-26 at 2-min cadence. These new observations were not used to discover or fit either signal, so they provide an independent test. This record was deposited before Sector 110 observations began and before any Sector 110 data were available. It is a pre-registration of that test, not a claim that either signal is a planet. The pre-registration fixes in advance: the predicted transit times and uncertainties for nine events of signal A and three of signal B; the expected transit depths; the light-curve processing; the decision rules for classifying each signal as recovered, inconsistent with the prediction, excluded, or not decidable from the data; for signal A, a pixel-level test of whether the transit-like signal is located on TIC 4206066. All analysis times are barycentric (BTJD = BJD_TDB - 2457000). UTC times are provided only for convenience. The outcomes are produced by frozen code included in the ZIP. The package also contains the prediction inputs, software environment, validation on archival TESS Sectors 6, 32 and 98, and instructions for reproducing the archival results from public TESS data. Additional pre-registered rules that are not enforced directly by the code are listed in section 9c of the document; results obtained in violation of those rules are invalid. The archival sectors were examined before this pre-registration. This record therefore pre-registers only the future Sector 110 test, not the original discovery or the full study. A recovery in Sector 110 would show that the predicted signals reappear at the predicted times and depths in independent data. It would not by itself prove that either signal is caused by a planet, because an unresolved eclipsing companion remains a possible false-positive scenario and requires additional follow-up such as high-resolution imaging and radial velocities. Start with PREREG_S110_FINAL.pdf. After Sector 110 is analysed, the analysis outputs and their checksums will be added as new versions of this record. The pre-registered rules in this version will not be changed. Code and text were drafted with AI assistance (Claude, Anthropic) and reviewed by the author, who is responsible for the final content.
Authors
- Pavel Rabtsevich
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-10-05
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23171455
- Primary Topic
- Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00