English

A Third Exoplanetary System with Misaligned Orbital and Stellar Spin Axes

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-05-13 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We present evidence that the WASP-14 exoplanetary system has misaligned orbital and stellar-rotational axes, with an angle lambda = 33.1 +/- 7.4 deg between their sky projections. The evidence is based on spectroscopic observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect as well as new photometric observations. WASP-14 is now the third system known to have a significant spin-orbit misalignment, and all three systems have "super-Jupiter" planets (M_P > 3 Mjup) and eccentric orbits. This finding suggests that the migration and subsequent orbital evolution of massive, eccentric exoplanets is somehow different from that of less massive close-in Jupiters, the majority of which have well-aligned orbits.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.5204,
  title  = {A Third Exoplanetary System with Misaligned Orbital and Stellar Spin Axes},
  author = {John A. Johnson and Joshua N. Winn and Simon Albrecht and Andrew W. Howard and Geoffrey W. Marcy and J. Zachary Gazak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.5204},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

8 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, PASP accepted

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:30:35.015Z