This was one of the 20 systems selected to be named in the third NameExoWorlds campaign, beginning in August 2022. The approved names, proposed by a team from Spain, were announced in June 2023. The star is named Filetdor and its planet is named Catalineta, after characters from a Mallorcan folktale about a golden sea serpent, Na Filet d'Or.[6]
Planetary system
The planet WASP-166b, later named Catalineta, is a hot, low-density super-Neptune, discovered in 2018 using the transit method as part of the Wide Angle Search for Planets. It is a rare example of a planet within the Neptune desert; few Neptune-mass planets are found so close to their stars.[4]
The orbit of WASP-166b is aligned with its host star's equator, differing from other similar hot Neptunes (such as HAT-P-11b, WASP-107b, and GJ 436 b) which have misaligned orbits.[4] The aligned orbit suggests that it is unlikely to have undergone high-eccentricity migration.[7]
While initial transmission spectroscopy observations of WASP-166b with the HARPS spectrograph failed to detect any molecules in the planet's atmosphere,[8] follow-up studies of the same dataset[9] and of ESPRESSO data have detected sodium in the atmosphere.[10] ESPRESSO has also been used to place constraints on the possible presence of water vapor and clouds.[11]
