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arxiv 2412.13253 v1 pith:UJBYU464 submitted 2024-12-17 astro-ph.EP astro-ph.SR

Quantifying spectroscopic Ca II exocomet transit occurrence in two decades of HARPS data

classification astro-ph.EP astro-ph.SR
keywords exocometstarstier1harpscandidatesdetectiondetectionsa-type
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The field of exocomets has been built around the unmatched number of detections made in the circumstellar disc of the archetypal star Beta Pictoris. An exocomet detection in spectroscopy is identified by variable atomic absorption features in a stellar spectrum, associated with transiting gas in and trailing an exocomet coma. This paper presents the largest spectroscopic search for exocomet transits to date, which overcomes the limitations of biased samples of stars with debris discs, and instead looks through the $\approx$7500 stars in the HARPS archive for signs of exocomets in the CaII doublet (H:396.847nm and K:393.366nm). The search resulted in 155 candidate stars, which after filtering for false positives (e.g. binaries, stellar activity, etc.), were cut down to 22 stars. These 22 stars are classified into Tier1, 2, and 3 exocomet candidates, reflecting the confidence level of their exocomet detection. Our two best candidates (Tier1: Beta Pictoris, HD172555) and four lower confidence candidates (Tier2: Gl1, HIP5158, HD94771, HR1996) are discussed, yielding a detection rate of 0.03% (Tier1 only) and 0.1% (Tier1 & 2) in the HARPS sample. Both Tier1 stars are known exocomet host stars. These two young A-type stars correspond to 0.4% of all A-types in the sample, suggesting that detecting signs of exocomet transits using CaII is more likely around young A-type stars. Reanalysing a past HARPS study, we found no evidence to support the previously claimed four exocomet detections, indicating either that those detections are not robust or that we are only sensitive to the strongest signals.

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Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. A search for circumstellar gas in pre-main-sequence debris discs using absorption spectroscopy

    astro-ph.EP 2026-07 accept novelty 5.5

    Absorption spectroscopy of 130 young debris-disc hosts yields two new circumstellar-gas detections (TYC7879-1373-1 stable; HIP30414 variable/accreting), both pre-MS and <5 Myr, bringing the <10 Myr total to eight.