Candidate O I 7774 Absorption from an Escaping Rock-Vapor Outflow of BD+05 4868 Ab

Disintegrating rocky planets provide a rare opportunity to probe material escaping directly from intensely irradiated planetary surfaces. We present time-resolved, low-resolution (R 600) optical spectroscopy and complementary ground-based photometry of BD+05 4868 Ab. The in-transit spectra exhibit an additional unresolved absorption feature near the O I triplet at 7771.94, 7774.17, and 7775.39 Angstroms relative to the out-of-transit baseline. The feature has an equivalent width of W λ 1.4 plus or minus0.2 Angstroms, a maximum differential depth of approximately 9%, and an apparent width of 13-16 Angstroms, comparable to the instrumental resolution. We interpret the feature as candidate O I absorption from an oxygen-bearing mineral-vapor outflow. The 3s, 5S squared lower level of the triplet lies 9.146 eV above the ground state and cannot be appreciably populated in LTE at the reported planetary temperature, requiring non-LTE excitation. A one-zone forward model in which photoionization, O+ recombination, radiative cascade, and radiative trapping populate the excited state reproduces the measured equivalent width and instrumentally broadened line profile. The model favors an atomic component with a projected extent larger than the narrow condensed-dust layer and permits gas-to-dust mass-loss ratios of order a few for representative ionizing irradiation. Stellar O I line-profile variations remain the principal alternative at the present spectral resolution. We therefore identify escaping O I as the preferred physical interpretation while retaining the designation candidate O I. High-resolution, phase-resolved spectroscopy can directly test this interpretation by resolving the individual triplet components.