Abstract The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has delivered a large number of transiting planet candidates around nearby stars by identifying periodic decreases in stellar brightness. Establishing the planetary nature of these signals and determining their fundamental properties is a necessary step toward detailed studies of their internal structure, atmospheres, and formation pathways. In this work, we investigate the planetary nature of the TOI–1752 system (M1 V, 103. 02 ± 0. 34 pc), which hosts two TESS candidates: TOI–1752 b, a short-period object consistent with a lava-world scenario, and TOI–1752 c, a sub-Neptune-size planet candidate located in the optimistic habitable zone. We obtained ground-based multi-color photometric follow-up observations of TOI–1752, which we combined with TESS photometry to assess the nature of both signals. We performed a formal statistical validation using the TRICERATOPS framework, while independently vetting the candidates with the neural-network-based classifier WATSON-Net, which provides a machine-learning assessment of their planetary likelihood based on light-curve morphology, centroid diagnostics, and auxiliary vetting features. We validate TOI–1752 b as a bona fide planet with a radius of 1. 69 ± 0. 07R⊕ and an orbital period of 0. 935186^+0. 000001-₀. ₀₀₀₀₀₂ days, and TOI–1752 c with a radius of 2. 29^+0. 13-₀. ₁₄ R and an orbital period of 32. 7144 ± 0. 0004 days. The combined analysis confirms TOI–1752 as a new planetary system, places TOI–1752 c within the optimistic habitable zone of its host star, and identifies TOI–1752 b as a promising target for atmospheric characterization, with an estimated emission spectroscopy metric (ESM) of up to ~8.
Peláez-Torres et al. (Wed,) studied this question.