Discovery of a young forming planet around the nearby star AU Mic

AU mic b light curves from TESS and Spitzer IRAC at 4.5 μm (purple filled circles). The transit model (orange curve) includes a photometric model that accounts for the stellar activity modelled with a Gaussian Process (GP), which is subtracted from the data before plotting. The frequent flares from the stellar surface are removed with an iterative sigma-clipping.
AU mic b light curves from TESS and Spitzer (purple circles). The transit model (orange curve) includes a photometric model that accounts for the stellar activity that is subtracted from the data. The frequent stellar surface flares are also removed.
Advertised on
Authors
P. Plavchan et al.
Department of Physics and Astronomy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
References
2020 Nature 582 497

AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is the second closest pre-main-sequence star, at a distance of 9.79 parsecs and with an age of 22 million years. AU Mic possesses a relatively rare and spatially resolved edge-on debris disk extending from about 35 to 210 astronomical units from the star, and with clumps exhibiting non-Keplerian motion. Detection of newly formed planets around such a star is challenged by the presence of spots, plage, flares and other manifestations of magnetic ‘activity’ on the star. Here we report observations of a planet transiting AU Mic. The transiting planet, AU Mic b, has an orbital period of 8.46 days, an orbital distance of 0.07 astronomical units, a radius of 0.4 Jupiter radii, and a mass of less than 0.18 Jupiter masses at 3σ confidence. Our observations of a planet co-existing with a debris disk offer the opportunity to test the predictions of current models of planet formation and evolution.

News type
Research news
Scope
Science and Technology
Severo Ochoa
SO Research
Astrophysics
Undergraduate
Scientists
Exoplanetary Systems & Solar System (SEYSS)
SEVERO OCHOA

It may interest you

  • Research news
    Scientific results with the QUIJOTE-MFI wide survey: The anomalous microwave emission in our Galaxy and M31
    In the 90s, the COBE satellite discovered that not all the microwave emission from our Galaxy behaved as expected. Part of this signal was later assigned to a fresh new emission component, spatially correlated with the Galactic dust emission, which showed greater importance in the microwave range of frequencies. It has been named since as “anomalous microwave emission”, or AME. The current main hypothesis to explain the AME origin is that it is emitted by small dust particles which undergo fast spinning movements. In Fernández-Torreiro et al. (2023), we study the observational properties of
    Advertised on
  • Artist's impression of the WASP-193b system. Credit: University of Liege
    Press release
    Astronomers spot a giant planet that’s as light as cotton candy
    An international team, led by a researcher from the University of Liège (Belgium) affiliated to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered an extraordinarily light planet orbiting a distant star in our galaxy. This discovery, reported today in the journal Nature Astronomy, is a promising key to solving the mystery of how such giant, super-light planets form. The new planet, named WASP-193b, appears to dwarf Jupiter in size, yet it is a fraction of its density. The scientists found that the gas giant is 50 percent bigger than Jupiter, and about a tenth as dense — an
    Advertised on
  • El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias celebra su XV edición del Día de Nuestra Ciencia
    El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias celebra su XV edición del Día de Nuestra Ciencia
    El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias celebra este viernes, 7 de junio, la XV edición del Día de Nuestra Ciencia. El evento interno tiene lugar en la sede del IACTEC en La Laguna y es el momento anual que tienen los grupos de trabajo del IAC para presentar y conocer la labor de las distintas áreas del centro: Investigación, Instrumentación y Divulgación. También es un momento de convivencia y de acercamiento entre los distintos equipos de trabajo.
    Advertised on