TASTE V. A new ground-based investigation of orbital decay in the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-12b

The discovery of the first transiting hot Jupiters (HJs; giant planets on orbital periods shorter than P∼10 days) was announced more than twenty years ago. As both ground- and space-based follow-up observations are piling up, we are approaching the temporal baseline required to detect secular variations in their orbital parameters. In particular, several recent studies focused on constraining the efficiency of the tidal decay mechanism to better understand the evolutionary time scales of HJ migration and engulfment. This can be achieved by measuring a monotonic decrease of orbital period dP/dt