Detection of an Atmospheric Outflow from the Young Hot Saturn TOI-1268b

Photoevaporative mass-loss rates are expected to be highest when planets are young and the host star is more active, but to date there have been relatively few measurements of mass-loss rates for young gas giant exoplanets. In this study we measure the present-day atmospheric mass-loss rate of TOI-1268b, a young (110–380 Myr) and low density (0.71^+0.17_-0.13 g cm⁻³) hot Saturn located near the upper edge of the Neptune desert. We use Palomar/WIRC to search for excess absorption in the 1083 nm helium triplet during two transits of TOI-1268b. We find that it has a larger transit depth (0.285^+0.045_-0.050%
excess) in the helium bandpass than in the TESS observations, and convert this excess absorption into a mass-loss rate by modeling the outflow as a Parker wind. Our results indicate that this planet is losing mass at a rate of logM = 10.2 ± 0.3 g s⁻¹ and has a thermosphere temperature of 6900⁺¹⁸⁰⁰_-1200 K. This corresponds to a predicted atmospheric lifetime much larger than 10 Gyr. Our result suggests that photoevaporation is weak in gas giant exoplanets even at early ages.