Abstract. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly elliptical 13.7-day orbit around the Earth. During its 2-year mission, TESS will employ four wide-field optical charge-coupled device cameras to monitor at least 200,000 main-sequence dwarf stars with I C ≈ 4 − 13 for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. Each star will be observed for an interval ranging from 1 month to 1 year, depending mainly on the star's ecliptic latitude. The longest observing intervals will be for stars near the ecliptic poles, which are the optimal locations for follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope. Brightness measurements of preselected target stars will be recorded every 2 min, and full frame images will be recorded every 30 min. TESS stars will be 10 to 100 times brighter than those surveyed by the pioneering Kepler mission. This will make TESS planets easier to characterize with follow-up observations. TESS is expected to find more than a thousand planets smaller than Neptune, including dozens that are comparable in size to the Earth. Public data releases will occur every 4 months, inviting immediate community-wide efforts to study the new planets. The TESS legacy will be a catalog of the nearest and brightest stars hosting transiting planets, which will endure as highly favorable targets for detailed investigations. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Doppler measurements from Subaru and Keck have revealed radial velocity variations in the V ¼ 8:15, G0 IV star HD 149026 consistent with a Saturn-mass planet in a 2.8766 day orbit. Photometric observations at Fairborn Observatory have detected three complete transit events with depths of 0.003 mag at the predicted times of conjunction. HD 149026 is now the second-brightest star with a transiting extrasolar planet. The mass of the star, based on interpolation of stellar evolutionary models, is 1:3 AE 0:1 M ; together with the Doppler amplitude K 1 ¼ 43:3 m s À1 , we derive a planet mass M sin i ¼ 0:36M J and orbital radius 0.042 AU. HD 149026 is chromospherically inactive and metal-rich with spectroscopically derived ½ Fe/ H ¼ þ0:36, T eA ¼ 6147 K, log g ¼ 4:26, and v sin i ¼ 6:0 km s À1 . Based on T eff and the stellar luminosity of 2.72 L , we derive a stellar radius of 1.45 R . Modeling of the three photometric transits provides an orbital inclination of 85N3 AE 1N0 and (including the uncertainty in the stellar radius) a planet radius of (0:725 AE 0:05) R J . Models for this planet mass and radius suggest the presence of a $67 M È core composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This substantial planet core would be difficult to construct by gravitational instability.

The properties of 322 intermediate-mass late-G giants (comprising 10 planet-host stars) selected as the targets of the Okayama Planet Search Program, many of which are red-clump giants, were comprehensively investigated by establishing their various stellar parameters (atmospheric parameters, including turbulent velocity fields, metallicity, luminosity, mass, age, projected rotational velocity, etc.), and their photospheric chemical abundances for 17 elements, in order to study their mutual dependence, connection with the existence of planets, and possible evolution-related characteristics. The metallicity distribution of planet-host giants was found to be almost the same as that of non-planet-host giants, making marked contrast to the case of planet-host dwarfs tending to be metal-rich. Generally, the metallicities of these comparatively young (typical age of $\sim 10^{9}$ yr) giants tend to be somewhat lower than those of dwarfs at the same age, and super-metal-rich ([Fe$/$H] $\gt$ 0.2) giants appear to be lacking. Apparent correlations were found between the abundances of C, O, and Na, suggesting that the surface compositions of these elements have undergone appreciable changes due to dredge-up of H-burning products by evolution-induced deep envelope mixing, which becomes more efficient for higher mass stars.