Research note
The archive selection rule, and how 598 rows became 304 docket rows
A fixed four-gate rule applied to a public confirmed-planet table, with the counts, the one-sided docket flag, and the limits recorded.
The archive step answers a narrow question: can a fixed selection rule be re-run from public archive metadata and produce the same shortlist and docket? It does not choose a target for a timing measurement and it does not rank candidates by suitability.
The rule
A row passes when all four gates hold:
| Gate | Test | Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed transiting planet | archive tran_flag == 1 | not applicable |
| TESS magnitude | sy_tmag <= 11.0 | 11.0 passes |
| Orbital period | pl_orbper <= 10.0 days | 10.0 passes |
| TESS sectors | at least two unique sector numbers | 2 passes |
The boundaries are inclusive and are tested at the edge values. A missing magnitude or period is not treated as passing. The shortlist order is deterministic: TESS magnitude, then period, then TIC, then planet name.
Counts from the committed snapshot
| Quantity | Value |
|---|---|
| Exoplanet Archive rows evaluated | 598 |
| Rows that passed the rule | 545 |
| Rows that failed only the two-sector gate | 53 |
| Unique TICs among evaluated rows | 531 |
| Unique TICs among selected rows | 479 |
| Docket rows | 304 |
| Unique TICs in the docket | 268 |
Shortlist rows held UNVERIFIED, not in the docket | 241 |
The query ran at 2026-10-22T06:15:21Z against the NASA Exoplanet Archive TAP
service and the MAST Mast.Caom.Filtered endpoint. The raw response bodies,
request times, HTTP statuses, and digests are in the run record linked below.
What the docket flag does and does not mean
The docket contains the rows whose recorded sector start year is later than the
year of the cited ephemeris. The status is labelled POSTDATES_REFERENCE_YEAR.
That is a one-sided date comparison. A sector that started after the reference year cannot have been part of that fit, but the flag does not prove that the published ephemeris omitted the sector. Confirming absence requires reading the ephemeris table in the cited paper. Every docket section carries that check as an open item.
Limits
- The snapshot is one query. Archive rows and sector lists can change.
- The rule is a reading order, not a ranking.
- The
UNVERIFIEDrows are held out, not failed. The distinction between 241 held rows and 304 docket rows matters and is corrected in the internal review. - No transit is detected and no timing is measured on this page.
Evidence in the repository
Topics: exoplanets, transit-timing, astronomy-methods