We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass stars. Data from the Kepler spacecraft reveal transits of the planet across both stars, in addition to the mutual eclipses of the stars, giving precise constraints on the absolute dimensions of all three bodies. The planet is comparable to Saturn in mass and size, and is on a nearly circular 229-day orbit around its two parent stars. The eclipsing stars are 20% and 69% as massive as the sun, and have an eccentric 41-day orbit. The motions of all three bodies are confined to within 0.5 degree of a single plane, suggesting that the planet formed within a circumbinary disk.
@article{arxiv.1109.3432,
title = {Kepler-16: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet},
author = {Laurance R. Doyle and Joshua A. Carter and Daniel C. Fabrycky and Robert W. Slawson and Steve B. Howell and Joshua N. Winn and Jerome A. Orosz and Andrej Prsa and William F. Welsh and Samuel N. Quinn and David Latham and Guillermo Torres and Lars A. Buchhave and Geoffrey W. Marcy and Jonathan J. Fortney and Avi Shporer and Eric B. Ford and Jack J. Lissauer and Darin Ragozzine and Michael Rucker and Natalie Batalha and Jon M. Jenkins and William J. Borucki and David Koch and Christopher K. Middour and Jennifer R. Hall and Sean McCauliff and Michael N. Fanelli and Elisa V. Quintana and Matthew J. Holman and Douglas A. Caldwell and Martin Still and Robert P. Stefanik and Warren R. Brown and Gilbert A. Esquerdo and Sumin Tang and Gabor Furesz and John C. Geary and Perry Berlind and Michael L. Calkins and Donald R. Short and Jason H. Steffen and Dimitar Sasselov and Edward W. Dunham and William D. Cochran and Alan Boss and Michael R. Haas and Derek Buzasi and Debra Fischer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.3432},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Science, in press; for supplemental material see http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2011/09/14/333.6049.1602.DC1/1210923.Doyle.SOM.pdf