We describe the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), which is a ground-based project searching for transiting exoplanets orbiting bright stars. NGTS builds on the legacy of previous surveys, most notably WASP, and is designed to achieve higher photometric precision and hence find smaller planets than have previously been detected from the ground. It also operates in red light, maximizing sensitivity to late K and early M dwarf stars. The survey specifications call for photometric precision of 0.1 per cent in red light over an instantaneous field of view of 100 deg², enabling the detection of Neptune-sized exoplanets around Sun-like stars and super-Earths around M dwarfs. The survey is carried out with a purpose-built facility at Cerro Paranal, Chile, which is the premier site of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). An array of twelve 20 cm f/2.8 telescopes fitted with back-illuminated deep-depletion CCD cameras is used to survey fields intensively at intermediate Galactic latitudes. The instrument is also ideally suited to ground-based photometric follow-up of exoplanet candidates from space telescopes such as TESS, Gaia and PLATO. We present observations that combine precise autoguiding and the superb observing conditions at Paranal to provide routine photometric precision of 0.1 per cent in 1 h for stars with I-band magnitudes brighter than 13. We describe the instrument and data analysis methods as well as the status of the survey, which achieved first light in 2015 and began full-survey operations in 2016. NGTS data will be made publicly available through the ESO archive.

We present the discovery by the WASP-South survey of WASP-121 b, a new remarkable short-period transiting hot Jupiter. The planet has a mass of $1.183_{-0.062}^{+0.064}$ M_Jup, a radius of 1.865 ± 0.044 R_Jup, and transits every $1.2749255_{-0.0000025}^{+0.0000020}$ days an active F6-type main-sequence star (V=10.4, $1.353_{-0.079}^{+0.080}$ M_⊙, 1.458 ± 0.030 R_⊙, T_eff = 6460 ± 140 K). A notable property of WASP-121 b is that its orbital semi-major axis is only ∼1.15 times larger than its Roche limit, which suggests that the planet is close to tidal disruption. Furthermore, its large size and extreme irradiation (∼7.1 10⁹ erg s⁻¹cm⁻²) make it an excellent target for atmospheric studies via secondary eclipse observations. Using the TRAPPIST telescope, we indeed detect its emission in the z′-band at better than ∼4σ, the measured occultation depth being 603 ± 130 ppm. Finally, from a measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect with the CORALIE spectrograph, we infer a sky-projected spin-orbit angle of $257.8_{-5.5}^{+5.3}$ deg. This result may suggest a significant misalignment between the spin axis of the host star and the orbital plane of the planet. If confirmed, this high misalignment would favor a migration of the planet involving strong dynamical events with a third body.

We report the discovery of WASP-43b, a hot Jupiter transiting a K7V star every 0.81 d. At 0.6-M ⊙ the host star has the lowest mass of any star currently known to host a hot Jupiter. It also shows a 15.6-d rotation period. The planet has a mass of 1.8 M Jup, a radius of 0.9 R Jup, and with a semi-major axis of only 0.014 AU has the smallest orbital distance of any known hot Jupiter. The discovery of such a planet around a K7V star shows that planets with apparently short remaining lifetimes owing to tidal decay of the orbit are also found around stars with deep convection zones.

We report the discovery of WASP-3b, the third transiting exoplanet to be discovered by the WASP and SOPHIE collaboration. WASP-3b transits its host s

We present the discovery of WASP-39b, a highly inflated transiting Saturn-mass planet orbiting a late G-type dwarf star with a period of 4.055259 ± 0.000008 d, Transit Epoch T 0 = 2 455 342.9688 ± 0.0002 (HJD), of duration 0.1168 ± 0.0008 d. A combined analysis of the WASP photometry, high-precision follow-up transit photometry, and radial velocities yield a planetary mass of M pl = 0.28 ± 0.03 M J and a radius of R pl = 1.27 ± 0.04 R J, resulting in a mean density of 0.14 ± 0.02 ρ J. The stellar parameters are mass M ⋆ = 0.93 ± 0.03 M ⊙, radius R ⋆ = 0.895 ± 0.23 R ⊙, and age Gyr. Only WASP-17b and WASP-31b have lower densities than WASP-39b, although they are slightly more massive and highly irradiated planets. From our spectral analysis, the metallicity of WASP-39 is measured to be [Fe/H] = −0.12 ± 0.1 dex, and we find the planet to have an equilibrium temperature of K. Both values strengthen the observed empirical correlation between these parameters and the planetary radius for the known transiting Saturn-mass planets.

We present seven new transiting hot Jupiters from the WASP-South survey. The planets are all typical hot Jupiters orbiting stars from F4 to K0 with m