Overview
- The team reported 27 candidates Monday in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society using NASA’s TESS data, a haul that would more than double the known tally if confirmed.
- Researchers tracked tiny shifts in when paired stars eclipse each other, a telltale sign that a third body’s gravity is slowly twisting the stars’ orbit.
- The search flagged 27 systems out of 1,590, about a 2 percent rate, and each case still needs follow‑up to confirm a planet.
- The inferred objects span roughly Neptune’s mass to about ten times Jupiter’s and sit about 650 to 18,000 light‑years away across both northern and southern skies.
- Authors say this approach could uncover thousands more with future wide surveys such as the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.