A Terrestrial Planet in a ~1 AU Orbit Around One Member of a ~15 AU Binary
Abstract
We detect a cold, terrestrial planet in a binary-star system using gravitational microlensing. The planet has low mass (2 Earth masses) and lies projected at ~ 0.8 astronomical units (AU) from its host star, similar to the Earth-Sun distance. However, the planet temperature is much lower, T<60 Kelvin, because the host star is only 0.10--0.15 solar masses and therefore more than 400 times less luminous than the Sun. The host is itself orbiting a slightly more massive companion with projected separation 10--15 AU. Straightforward modification of current microlensing search strategies could increase their sensitivity to planets in binary systems. With more detections, such binary-star/planetary systems could place constraints on models of planet formation and evolution. This detection is consistent with such systems being very common.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1407.1115,
title = {A Terrestrial Planet in a ~1 AU Orbit Around One Member of a ~15 AU Binary},
author = {A. Gould and A. Udalski and I. -G. Shin and I. Porritt and J. Skowron and C. Han and J. C. Yee and S. Kozłowski and J. -Y. Choi and R. Poleski and Ł. Wyrzykowski and K. Ulaczyk and P. Pietrukowicz and P. Mróz and M. K. Szymański and M. Kubiak and I. Soszyński and G. Pietrzyński and B. S. Gaudi and G. W. Christie and J. Drummond and J. McCormick and T. Natusch and H. Ngan and T. -G. Tan and M. Albrow and D. L. DePoy and K. -H. Hwang and Y. K. Jung and C. -U. Lee and H. Park and R. W. Pogge and F. Abe and D. P. Bennett and I. A. Bond and C. S. Botzler and M. Freeman and A. Fukui and D. Fukunaga and Y. Itow and N. Koshimoto and P. Larsen and C. H. Ling and K. Masuda and Y. Matsubara and Y. Muraki and S. Namba and K. Ohnishi and L. Philpott and N. J. Rattenbury and To. Saito and D. J. Sullivan and T. Sumi and D. Suzuki and P. J. Tristram and N. Tsurumi and K. Wada and N. Yamai and P. C. M. Yock and A. Yonehara and Y. Shvartzvald and D. Maoz and S. Kaspi and M. Friedmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.1115},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Published in Science, Main and supplementary material combined