Habitable Zones & Global Climate

A Neptune-mass Planet Traversing the Habitable Zone Around HD 180617

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
August 6, 2018
Filed under
A Neptune-mass Planet Traversing the Habitable Zone Around HD 180617
HD 180617
SpaceRef

Despite their activity, low-mass stars are of particular importance for the search of exoplanets by the means of Doppler spectroscopy, as planets with lower masses become detectable.

We report on the discovery of a planetary companion around HD 180617, a bright J = 5.58 mag, low-mass M = 0.45 M_{sun} star of spectral type M2.5 V. The star, located at a distance of 5.9 pc, is the primary of the high proper motion binary system containing vB 10, a star with one of the lowest masses known in most of the twentieth century. Our analysis is based on new radial velocity (RV) measurements made at red-optical wavelengths provided by the high-precision spectrograph CARMENES, which was designed to carry out a survey for Earth-like planets around M dwarfs. The available CARMENES data are augmented by archival Doppler measurements from HIRES and HARPS. Altogether, the RVs span more than 16 years.

The modeling of the RV variations, with a semi-amplitude of K = 2.85-0.25/+0.16m/s yields a Neptune-like planet with a minimum mass of 12.2-1.4/+1.0 M_{Earth} on a 105.90-0.10/+0.09d circumprimary orbit, which is partly located in the host star’s habitable zone. The analysis of time series of common activity indicators does not show any dependence on the detected RV signal. The discovery of HD 180617 b not only adds information to a currently hardly filled region of the mass-period diagram of exoplanets around M dwarfs, but the investigated system becomes the third known binary consisting of M dwarfs and hosting an exoplanet in an S-type configuration. Its proximity makes it an attractive candidate for future studies.

The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. A Neptune-mass planet traversing the habitable zone around HD 180617

A. Kaminski (1), T. Trifonov (2), J. A. Caballero (3), A. Quirrenbach (1), I. Ribas (4 and 5), A. Reiners (6), P. J. Amado (7), M. Zechmeister (6), S. Dreizler (6), M. Perger (4 and 5), L. Tal-Or (8 and 6), X. Bonfils (9), M. Mayor (10), N. Astudillo-Defru (11), F. F. Bauer (7 and 6), V. J. S. BĂ©jar (12 and 13), C. Cifuentes (14 and 3), J. ColomĂ© (4 and 5), M. CortĂ©s-Contreras (3), X. Delfosse (9), E. DĂ­ez-Alonso (14), T. Forveille (9), E. W. Guenther (15), A. P. Hatzes (15), Th. Henning (2), S. V. Jeffers (6), M. KĂĽrster (2), M. Lafarga (4 and 5), R. Luque (12 and 13 and 1), H. Mandel (1), D. Montes (14), J. C. Morales (4 and 5), V. M. Passegger (16), S. Pedraz (17), S. Reffert (1), S. Sadegi (1), A. Schweitzer (16), W. Seifert (1), O. Stahl (1), S. Udry (10) ((1) Landessternwarte, Zentrum fĂĽr Astronomie der Universtät Heidelberg, Germany, (2) Max-Planck-Institut fĂĽr Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany, (3) Centro de AstrobiologĂ­a (CSIC-INTA), ESAC campus, Madrid, Spain, (4) Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC), Campus UAB, Barcelona, Spain, (5) Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), Barcelona, Spain, (6) Institut fĂĽr Astrophysik, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany, (7) Instituto de AstrofĂ­sica de AndalucĂ­a (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain, (8) School of Geosciences, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel, (9) UniversitĂ© Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France, (10) Observatoire de Genève, UniversitĂ© de Genève, Switzerland, (11) Departamento de AstronomĂ­a, Universidad de ConcepciĂłn, ConcepciĂłn, Chile, (12) Instituto de AstrofĂ­sica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain, (13) Departamento de AstrofĂ­sica, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, (14) Departamento de AstrofĂ­sica y Ciencias de la AtmĂłsfera, Facultad de Ciencias FĂ­sicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, (15) ThĂĽringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany, (16) Hamburger Sternwarte, Germany, (17) Centro AstronĂłmico Hispano-Alemán (CSIC-MPG), Observatorio AstronĂłmico de Calar Alto, Sierra de los Filabres, AlmerĂ­a, Spain)
(Submitted on 3 Aug 2018)

Comments: 16 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables; Accepted by A&A
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1808.01183 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1808.01183v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Adrian Kaminski
[v1] Fri, 3 Aug 2018 13:34:10 GMT (1318kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.01183
Astrobiology

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