PTFO 8-8695b: An Extremely Young T-Tauri-Transiting Planet

Estimated at only ~3Myr old, PTFO 8-8695b is a candidate for the youngest transiting planet yet found, and presents a potentially valuable snapshot of a close-in pre-main-sequence planet still in its infancy. Ongoing investigation is painting an unusual but increasingly compelling picture: orbiting a rapidly-rotating T-Tauri star at just under a half-day period, it appears the planet's orbit may be inclined and precessing on timescales as short as ~hundreds of days - a timescale easily accessible to observation. The star shows substantial flaring activity, and the planet's measured radius suggests that it may be actively be losing mass. The unusual properties of this object make it particularly interesting for continued investigation. We present some of our current observations and our interpretation of the data.