DS Tuc Ab is a Neptune-sized planet that orbits around a member of the 45 Myr old Tucana-Horologium moving group. Here, we report the measurement of the sky-projected angle between the stellar spin axis and the planet's orbital axis, based on the observation of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect during three separate planetary transits. The orbit appears to be well aligned with the equator of the host star, with a projected obliquity of lambda = 2.5 +1.0/-0.9 deg. In addition to the distortions in the stellar absorption lines due to the transiting planet, we observed variations that we attribute to large starspots, with angular sizes of tens of degrees. The technique we have developed for simultaneous modeling of starspots and the planet-induced distortions may be useful in other observations of planets around active stars.
@article{arxiv.1912.04095,
title = {A well aligned orbit for the 45 Myr old transiting Neptune DS Tuc Ab},
author = {G. Zhou and J. N. Winn and E. R. Newton and S. N. Quinn and J. E. Rodriguez and A. W. Mann and A. C. Rizzuto and A. M. Vanderburg and C. X. Huang and D. W. Latham and J. K. Teske and S. Wang and S. A. Shectman and R. P. Butler and J. D. Crane and I. Thompson and T. J. Henry and L. A. Paredes and W. C. Jao and H. S. James and R. Hinojosa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.04095},
year = {2020}
}