The scope of the project ‘ ‘ A PSF-based Approach to TESS High Quality data Of Stellar clusters ’ ’ ( PATHOS ) is the extraction and analysis of high-precision light curves of stars in stellar clusters and young associations for the identification of candidate exoplanets and variable stars .
The cutting-edge tools used in this project allow us to measure the real flux of stars in dense fields , minimising the effects due to contamination by neighbour sources .
We extracted about 200 000 light curves of stars in 645 open clusters located in the southern ecliptic hemisphere and observed by TESS during the first year of its mission .
We searched for transiting signals and we found 33 objects of interest , 11 of them are strong candidate exoplanets .
Because of the limited S/N , we did not find any Earth or super-Earth .
We identified two Neptune-size planets orbiting stars with R _ { \star } < 1.5 R _ { \sun } , implying a frequency f _ { \star } = 1.34 \pm 0.95 \% , consistent with the frequency around field stars .
The 7 Jupiter candidates around stars with R _ { \star } < 1.5 R _ { \sun } imply a frequency f _ { \star } = 0.19 \pm 0.07 \% , smaller than in the field .
A more complete estimate of the survey completeness and false positive rate is needed to confirm these results .
Light curves used in this work will be made available to the astronomical community on the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescope under the project PATHOS .