Bibcode
Sanchis-Ojeda, R.; Rappaport, S.; Pallè, E.; Delrez, L.; DeVore, J.; Gandolfi, D.; Fukui, A.; Ribas, I.; Stassun, K. G.; Albrecht, S.; Dai, F.; Gaidos, E.; Gillon, M.; Hirano, T.; Holman, M.; Howard, A. W.; Isaacson, H.; Jehin, E.; Kuzuhara, M.; Mann, A. W.; Marcy, G. W.; Miles-Páez, P. A.; Montañés-Rodríguez, P.; Murgas, F.; Narita, N.; Nowak, G.; Onitsuka, M.; Paegert, M.; Van Eylen, V.; Winn, J. N.; Yu, L.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 812, Issue 2, article id. 112, 22 pp. (2015).
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10
2015
Journal
Citations
131
Refereed citations
124
Description
We present the discovery of a transiting exoplanet candidate in the K2
Field-1 with an orbital period of 9.1457 hr: K2-22b. The highly variable
transit depths, ranging from ∼0% to 1.3%, are suggestive of a planet
that is disintegrating via the emission of dusty effluents. We
characterize the host star as an M-dwarf with Teff ≃
3800 K. We have obtained ground-based transit measurements with several
1-m class telescopes and with the GTC. These observations (1) improve
the transit ephemeris; (2) confirm the variable nature of the transit
depths; (3) indicate variations in the transit shapes; and (4)
demonstrate clearly that at least on one occasion the transit depths
were significantly wavelength dependent. The latter three effects tend
to indicate extinction of starlight by dust rather than by any
combination of solid bodies. The K2 observations yield a folded light
curve with lower time resolution but with substantially better
statistical precision compared with the ground-based observations. We
detect a significant “bump” just after the transit egress,
and a less significant bump just prior to transit ingress. We interpret
these bumps in the context of a planet that is not only likely streaming
a dust tail behind it, but also has a more prominent leading dust trail
that precedes it. This effect is modeled in terms of dust grains that
can escape to beyond the planet's Hill sphere and effectively undergo
“Roche lobe overflow,” even though the planet's surface is
likely underfilling its Roche lobe by a factor of 2.
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Exoplanets and Astrobiology
The search for life in the universe has been driven by recent discoveries of planets around other stars (known as exoplanets), becoming one of the most active fields in modern astrophysics. The growing number of new exoplanets discovered in recent years and the recent advance on the study of their atmospheres are not only providing new valuable
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