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Giant exoplanets orbiting close to their host stars are unlikely to have formed in their present configurations 1 . These ‘hot Jupiter’ planets are instead thought to have migrated inward from beyond the ice line and several viable migration channels have been proposed, including eccentricity excitation through angular-momentum exchange with a third body followed by tidally driven orbital circularization 2 , 3 . The discovery of the extremely eccentric ( e  = 0.93) giant exoplanet HD 80606 b (ref.  4 ) provided observational evidence that hot Jupiters may have formed through this high-eccentricity tidal-migration pathway 5 . However, no similar hot-Jupiter progenitors have been found and simulations predict that one factor affecting the efficacy of this mechanism is exoplanet mass, as low-mass planets are more likely to be tidally disrupted during periastron passage 6 – 8 . Here we present spectroscopic and photometric observations of TIC 241249530 b, a high-mass, transiting warm Jupiter with an extreme orbital eccentricity of e  = 0.94. The orbit of TIC 241249530 b is consistent with a history of eccentricity oscillations and a future tidal circularization trajectory. Our analysis of the mass and eccentricity distributions of the transiting-warm-Jupiter population further reveals a correlation between high mass and high eccentricity. The spectroscopic and photometric observations of a high-mass, transiting warm Jupiter, TIC 241249530 b, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.94, provide evidence that hot Jupiters may have formed by means of a high-eccentricity tidal-migration pathway.

The NEID spectrograph on the WIYN 3.5-m telescope at Kitt Peak has completed its first full year of science operations and is reliably delivering sub-m/s precision radial velocity measurements. The NEID instrument control system uses the TIMS package (Bender et al. 2016), which is a client-server software system built around the twisted python software stack. During science observations, interaction with the NEID spectrograph is handled through a pair of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), written in PyQT, which wrap the underlying instrument control software and provide straightforward and reliable access to the instrument. Here, we detail the design of these interfaces and present an overview of their use for NEID operations. Observers can use the NEID GUIs to set the exposure time, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold, and other relevant parameters for observations, configure the calibration bench and observing mode, track or edit observation metadata, and monitor the current state of the instrument. These GUIs facilitate automatic spectrograph configuration and target ingestion from the nightly observing queue, which improves operational efficiency and consistency across epochs. By interfacing with the NEID exposure meter, the GUIs also allow observers to monitor the progress of individual exposures and trigger the shutter on user-defined SNR thresholds. In addition, inset plots of the instantaneous and cumulative exposure meter counts as each observation progresses allow for rapid diagnosis of changing observing conditions as well as guiding failure and other emergent issues.

The distribution of spin-orbit angles for systems with wide-separation, tidally detached exoplanets offers a unique constraint on the prevalence of dynamically violent planetary evolution histories. Tidally detached planets provide a relatively unbiased view of the primordial stellar obliquity distribution, since they cannot tidally realign within the system lifetime. We present the third result from our Stellar Obliquities in Long-period Exoplanet Systems (SOLES) survey: a measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect across two transits of the tidally detached warm Jupiter TOI-1478 b with the WIYN/NEID and Keck/HIRES spectrographs, revealing a sky-projected spin-orbit angle \\(\\lambda=6.2^{+5.9}_{-5.5}\\) degrees. Combining this new measurement with the full set of archival obliquity measurements, including two previous constraints from the SOLES survey, we demonstrate that, in single-star systems, tidally detached warm Jupiters are preferentially more aligned than closer-orbiting hot Jupiters. This finding has two key implications: (1) planets in single-star systems tend to form within aligned protoplanetary disks, and (2) warm Jupiters form more quiescently than hot Jupiters, which, in single-star systems, are likely perturbed into a misaligned state through planet-planet interactions in the post-disk-dispersal phase. We also find that lower-mass Saturns span a wide range of spin-orbit angles, suggesting a prevalence of planet-planet scattering and/or secular mechanisms in these systems.

NEID is a high-resolution red-optical precision radial velocity (RV) spectrograph recently commissioned at the WIYN 3.5 m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona, USA. NEID has an extremely stable environmental control system, and spans a wavelength range of 380 to 930 nm with two observing modes: a High Resolution (HR) mode at R \\(\\sim\\) 112,000 for maximum RV precision, and a High Efficiency (HE) mode at R \\(\\sim\\) 72,000 for faint targets. In this manuscript we present a detailed description of the components of NEID's optical fiber feed, which include the instrument, exposure meter, calibration system, and telescope fibers. Many parts of the optical fiber feed can lead to uncalibratable RV errors, which cannot be corrected for using a stable wavelength reference source. We show how these errors directly cascade down to performance requirements on the fiber feed and the scrambling system. We detail the design, assembly, and testing of each component. Designed and built from the bottom-up with a single-visit instrument precision requirement of 27 \\(\\textrm{cm~s}^{-1}\\), close attention was paid to the error contribution from each NEID subsystem. Finally, we include the lab and on-sky tests performed during instrument commissioning to test the illumination stability, and discuss the path to achieving the instrumental stability required to search for a true Earth twin around a Solar-type star.

Here we present the results of an airborne 3-5.4\\(\\mu\\)m spectroscopic study of three young, Carbon-rich planetary nebulae IC 5117, PNG 093.9-00.1, and BD \\(+\\)30 3639. These observations were made using the grism spectroscopy mode of the FLITECAM instrument during airborne science operations onboard NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The goal of this study is to characterize the 3.3 \\(\\mu\\)m and 5.25 \\(\\mu\\)m PAH dust emission in planetary nebulae and study the evolution of PAH features within evolved stars before their incorporation into new stellar systems in star-forming regions. Targets were selected from IRAS, KAO and ISO source lists, and were previously observed with FLITECAM on the 3-meter Shane telescope at Lick Observatory to allow direct comparison between the ground and airborne observations. We measure PAH emission equivalent width and central wavelength, classify the shape of the PAH emission, and determine the PAH/Aliphatic ratio for each target. The 3.3 \\(\\mu\\)m PAH emission feature is observed in all three objects. PNG 093.9-00.1 exhibits NGC 7027-like aliphatic emission in the 3.4 to 3.6 \\(\\mu\\)m region while IC 5117 and BD +30 3639 exhibit less aliphatic structure. All three PNs additionally exhibit PAH emission at 5.25 \\(\\mu\\)m.

We report the results of observations of p-mode oscillations in the G0 subgiant star HD 35833 in both radial velocities and photometry with NEID and TESS, respectively. We achieve separate, robust detections of the oscillation signal with both instruments (radial velocity amplitude \\(A_{\\rm RV}=1.11\\pm0.09\\) m s\\(^{-1}\\), photometric amplitude \\(A_{\\rm phot}=6.42\\pm0.60\\) ppm, frequency of maximum power \\(\\nu_{\\rm max} = 595.71\\pm17.28\\) \\(\\mu\\)Hz, and mode spacing \\(\\Delta \\nu = 36.65\\pm0.96\\) \\(\\mu\\)Hz) as well as a non-detection in a TESS sector concurrent with the NEID observations. These data shed light on our ability to mitigate the correlated noise impact of oscillations with radial velocities alone, and on the robustness of commonly used asteroseismic scaling relations. The NEID data are used to validate models for the attenuation of oscillation signals for exposure times \\(t<\\nu_{\\rm max}^{-1}\\), and we compare our results to predictions from theoretical scaling relations and find that the observed amplitudes are weaker than expected by \\(>4\\sigma\\), hinting at gaps in the underlying physical models.

TOI-1899 b is a rare exoplanet, a temperate Warm Jupiter orbiting an M-dwarf, first discovered by Cañas et al. (2020) from a TESS single-transit event. Using new radial velocities (RVs) from the precision RV spectrographs HPF and NEID, along with additional TESS photometry and ground-based transit follow-up, we are able to derive a much more precise orbital period of \\(P = 29.090312_{-0.000035}^{+0.000036}\\) d, along with a radius of \\(R_p = 0.99 \\pm 0.03~R_J\\). We have also improved the constraints on planet mass, \\(M_p = 0.67 \\pm 0.04~M_J\\), and eccentricity, which is consistent with a circular orbit at 2\\(\\sigma\\) (\\(e = 0.044_{-0.027}^{+0.029}\\)). TOI-1899 b occupies a unique region of parameter space as the coolest known (\\(T_{eq} \\approx\\) 380 K) Jovian-sized transiting planet around an M-dwarf; we show that it has great potential to provide clues regarding the formation and migration mechanisms of these rare gas giants through transmission spectroscopy with JWST as well as studies of tidal evolution.

Warm Jupiters are close-in giant planets with relatively large planet-star separations (i.e., \\(10< a/R_\\star <100\\)). Given their weak tidal interactions with their host stars, measurements of stellar obliquity may be used to probe the initial obliquity distribution and dynamical history for close-in gas giants. Using spectroscopic observations, we confirm the planetary nature of TOI-1859b and determine the stellar obliquity of TOI-1859 to be \\(\\lambda = 38.9^{+2.8}_{-2.7}\\deg\\) relative to its planetary companion using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. TOI-1859b is a 64-day warm Jupiter orbiting around a late-F dwarf and has an orbital eccentricity of \\(0.57^{+0.12}_{-0.16}\\), inferred purely from transit light curves. The eccentric and misaligned orbit of TOI-1859b is likely an outcome of dynamical interactions, such as planet-planet scattering and planet-disk resonance crossing.

We present the results of a Keck/NIRSPEC follow-up survey of thirteen late-type T dwarfs (T6-T9), twelve of which have unusually red or blue J-H colors. Previous work suggests that J-H color outliers may represent the high-gravity, low-metallicity (old) and low-gravity, solar-metallicity (young) extremes of the late-type T dwarf population. We use medium-resolution Y- and H-band spectroscopy to probe regions of T dwarf atmospheres that are more sensitive to gravity and metallicity variations than the J band. We find that the spectral morphologies of our sample are largely homogeneous, with peak-normalized, Y- and H-band morphologies consistent with spectral standards. However, three objects stand out as potentially old, with overluminous Y-band spectra compared to their respective spectral standards, and a fourth object stands out as potentially young, with an underluminous Y band. Of these four objects, three have been previously identified as potential metallicity/gravity outliers, including the one object in our sample with a normal J-H color. We fit publicly available atmospheric model grids to our spectra and find that the best-fit physical parameters vary depending on the model used. As we continue to probe the characteristics of the late-T population, differences in synthetic spectra of ~10-20% in the blue wing of the Y band and ~45% at 1.65 microns, for the same physical parameters, must be reconciled. Further development and public availability of nonsolar metallicity models is also recommended. Future progress toward deciphering the impacts of gravity, metallicity, and variability in the late-type T dwarf population will also require high signal-to-noise, multiwavelength and multi-epoch photometry and spectroscopy.

We present high resolution WIYN/NEID echelle spectroscopy (R \\(\\approx70\\),000) of the supernova (SN) 2023ixf in M101, obtained 1.51 to 18.51 days after explosion over nine epochs. Daily monitoring for the first four days after explosion shows narrow emission features (\\(\\leq200\\) km s\\(^{-1}\\)), exhibiting predominantly blueshifted velocities, that rapidly weaken, broaden, and vanish in a manner consistent with radiative acceleration and the SN shock eventually overrunning or enveloping the full extent of dense circumstellar medium (CSM). The most rapid evolution is in the He I emission, which is visible on day 1.51 but disappears by day 2.62. We measure the maximum pre-SN speed of He I to be 25 \\(^{+0}_{-5} \\pm2\\) km s\\(^{-1}\\), where the error is attributable to the uncertainty in how much the He I had already been radiatively accelerated, and to measurement of the emission line profile. The radiative acceleration of material is likely driven by the shock-CSM interaction, and the CSM is accelerated to \\(\\geq200\\) km s\\(^{-1}\\) before being completely swept up by the SN shock to \\(\\sim 2000\\) km s\\(^{-1}\\). We compare the observed spectra with spherically-symmetric r16wb HERACLES/CMFGEN model spectra and find the line evolution to generally be consistent with radiative acceleration and optical depth effects. The progenitor of SN2023ixf underwent an enhanced mass loss phase \\(\\gtrsim 4\\) year prior to core-collapse, creating a dense, asymmetric CSM region extending out to approximately \\(r_{CSM} = 3.7 \\times 10^{14}\\) (\\(v_\\textrm{shock}\\)/9500 km s\\(^{-1}\\)) cm.