Movatterモバイル変換

• Kostov, Veselin B.
;
• Orosz, Jerome A.
;
• Welsh, William F.
;
• Doyle, Laurance R.
;
• Fabrycky, Daniel C.
;
• Haghighipour, Nader
;
• Quarles, Billy
;
• Short, Donald R.
;
• Cochran, William D.
;
• Endl, Michael
;
• Ford, Eric B.
;
• Gregorio, Joao
;
• Hinse, Tobias C.
;
• Isaacson, Howard
;
• Jenkins, Jon M.
;
• Jensen, Eric L. N.
;
• Kane, Stephen
;
• Kull, Ilya
;
• Latham, David W.
;
• Lissauer, Jack J.
;
• Marcy, Geoffrey W.
;
• Mazeh, Tsevi
;
• Müller, Tobias W. A.
;
• Pepper, Joshua
;
• Quinn, Samuel N.
;
• Ragozzine, Darin
;
• Shporer, Avi
;
• Steffen, Jason H.
;
• Torres, Guillermo
;
• Windmiller, Gur
;
• Borucki, William J.

Abstract

We report the discovery of a new Kepler transiting circumbinary planet (CBP). This latest addition to the still-small family of CBPs defies the current trend of known short-period planets orbiting near the stability limit of binary stars. Unlike the previous discoveries, the planet revolving around the eclipsing binary system Kepler-1647 has a very long orbital period (∼1100 days) and was at conjunction only twice during the Kepler mission lifetime. Due to the singular configuration of the system, Kepler-1647b is not only the longest-period transiting CBP at the time of writing, but also one of the longest-period transiting planets. With a radius of 1.06 ± 0.01 R_Jup, it is also the largest CBP to date. The planet produced three transits in the light curve of Kepler-1647 (one of them during an eclipse, creating a syzygy) and measurably perturbed the times of the stellar eclipses, allowing us to measure its mass, 1.52 ± 0.65 M_Jup. The planet revolves around an 11-day period eclipsing binary consisting of two solar-mass stars on a slightly inclined, mildly eccentric (e_bin = 0.16), spin-synchronized orbit. Despite having an orbital period three times longer than Earth’s, Kepler-1647b is in the conservative habitable zone of the binary star throughout its orbit.

Graphics

Click to view more