SOAR TESS survey. II. Impact of stellar companions

We find 89 of the 589 newly observed TESS planet candidate hosts have companions within 3", resulting in light-curve dilution, that, if not accounted for, leads to underestimated planetary radii. We combined these observations with those from PaperI to search for evidence of the impact binary stars have on planetary systems.

Removing the one-quarter of the targets observed identified as false-positive planet detections, we find that transiting planets are suppressed by nearly a factor of seven in close solar-type binaries, nearly twice the suppression previously reported. The result on planet occurrence rates that are based on magnitude-limited surveys is an overestimation by a factor of two if binary suppression is not taken into account.