A 252-Day Planet Candidate, Possibly in the Habitable Zone, in the KIC 3755522 System

Kepler saw KIC 3755522 dim four times, every 252 days. It blends light from two stars, A and its companion B. NASA's Exoplanet Archive lists this signal, KOI-5005.01, as a false positive because the dips are centred away from A. The pixels point to B, but some signal could come from A. The host star is unclear. The signal is not proven real or false. The first dip's depth depends on how the data are processed. The other three dips are weak: 16 of 34 upside-down light curves have dips as strong or stronger. If the signal is real, comes entirely from B, and B is a single star, the object would be about 2.4 times Earth's size. It would get about as much light as Earth: 0.97 to 1.15 times, depending on the orbit's shape. It may lie in the habitable zone, but this is uncertain. Two stars eclipsing each other fit as well as a planet. An instrument effect, a background eclipsing pair, or B's companion could also explain it. TRICERATOPS (with my code fix) leaves out instrument effects and the 504-day eclipsing pair of B and a companion. It gives a false positive probability of about 0.3. Even with A and nearby stars ruled out, this is 0.015 to 0.037, not clearly below the 0.015 needed to validate a planet. KOI-5005.01 remains an unvalidated planet candidate.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-10-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23807945
Primary Topic
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
Type
preprint
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preprint

A 252-Day Planet Candidate, Possibly in the Habitable Zone, in the KIC 3755522 System

Pavel Rabtsevich
2 links
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
preprint

A 252-Day Planet Candidate, Possibly in the Habitable Zone, in the KIC 3755522 System

Pavel Rabtsevich
preprint en

Abstract

Kepler saw KIC 3755522 dim four times, every 252 days. It blends light from two stars, A and its companion B. NASA's Exoplanet Archive lists this signal, KOI-5005.01, as a false positive because the dips are centred away from A. The pixels point to B, but some signal could come from A. The host star is unclear. The signal is not proven real or false. The first dip's depth depends on how the data are processed. The other three dips are weak: 16 of 34 upside-down light curves have dips as strong or stronger. If the signal is real, comes entirely from B, and B is a single star, the object would be about 2.4 times Earth's size. It would get about as much light as Earth: 0.97 to 1.15 times, depending on the orbit's shape. It may lie in the habitable zone, but this is uncertain. Two stars eclipsing each other fit as well as a planet. An instrument effect, a background eclipsing pair, or B's companion could also explain it. TRICERATOPS (with my code fix) leaves out instrument effects and the 504-day eclipsing pair of B and a companion. It gives a false positive probability of about 0.3. Even with A and nearby stars ruled out, this is 0.015 to 0.037, not clearly below the 0.015 needed to validate a planet. KOI-5005.01 remains an unvalidated planet candidate.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
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