An Upper Limit on the Reflected Light from the Planet Orbiting the Star tau Bootis
Abstract
The planet orbiting tau Boo at a separation of 0.046 AU could produce a reflected light flux as bright as 1e-4 relative to that of the star. A spectrum of the system will contain a reflected light component which varies in amplitude and Doppler-shift as the planet orbits the star. Assuming the secondary spectrum is primarily the reflected stellar spectrum, we can limit the relative reflected light flux to be less than 5e-5. This implies an upper limit of 0.3 for the planetary geometric albedo near 480 nm, assuming a planetary radius of 1.2 R_Jup. This albedo is significantly less than that of any of the giant planets of the solar system, and is not consistent with certain published theoretical predictions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9907195,
title = {An Upper Limit on the Reflected Light from the Planet Orbiting the Star tau Bootis},
author = {David Charbonneau and Robert W. Noyes and Sylvain G. Korzennik and Peter Nisenson and Saurabh Jha and Steven S. Vogt and Robert I. Kibrick},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9907195},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
5 pages, 1 figure, accepted by ApJ Letters