Unseen planet tugged TOI-2535 b until its transits vanished

TOI-2535 b, a hot Jupiter about 1,000 light-years away, stopped producing detectable transits after seven years of observations. The disappearance is attributed to an unseen neighboring planet pulling the planet off its orbit.

TOI-2535 b is a hot Jupiter about 1,000 light-years away. Its orbit takes 8.25 Earth days, about 10 times quicker than Mercury.

The transit disappeared after seven years of observations, and TESS is no longer spotting transits. The timing offset is given as six hours early or six hours later.

The facts describe mutual pulling between TOI-2535 b and an unseen neighbor, with orbits in the TOI-2535 system wobbling. TOI-2535 b is also tilted out of alignment with its star.

The team's research announcement is dated Nov. 9, 2026, and the research is linked to Astrophysical Journal Letters. Samuel Yee is associated with the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hot Jupiters likely form far from stars and migrate inward, and scientists describe two migration ways. One less turbulent route would produce a very flat system with no extreme tilts between orbits.

TESS is ongoing and has found many hot Jupiters. It is linked to 8,100 candidate exoplanets and 1,000 confirmed exoplanets, and new machine learning techniques are finding additional exoplanets in archival data.

For readers tracking the lunar industry, the relevance is indirect: the facts describe an exoplanet system rather than lunar operations.

Scientifically, the case shows that a transit can disappear while watching and that an unseen neighbor can pull a known planet, wobbling the system's orbits.

It also indicates flattened systems can be twisted later, and slower migration remains possible despite orbital tilt. This is relevant to hot Jupiters, a class TESS has found many of.