Bibcode
Gandolfi, D.; Parviainen, H.; Fridlund, M.; Hatzes, A. P.; Deeg, H. J.; Frasca, A.; Lanza, A. F.; Prada Moroni, P. G.; Tognelli, E.; McQuillan, A.; Aigrain, S.; Alonso, R.; Antoci, V.; Cabrera, J.; Carone, L.; Csizmadia, Sz.; Djupvik, A. A.; Guenther, E. W.; Jessen-Hansen, J.; Ofir, A.; Telting, J.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 557, id.A74, 13 pp.
Advertised on:
9
2013
Journal
Citations
41
Refereed citations
38
Description
We report the discovery of Kepler-77b (alias
KOI-127.01), a Saturn-mass transiting planet in a
3.6-day orbit around a metal-rich solar-like star. We combined the
publicly available Kepler photometry (quarters 1-13) with
high-resolution spectroscopy from the Sandiford at McDonald and FIES at
NOT spectrographs. We derived the system parameters via a simultaneous
joint fit to the photometric and radial velocity measurements. Our
analysis is based on the Bayesian approach and is carried out by
sampling the parameter posterior distributions using a Markov chain
Monte Carlo simulation. Kepler-77b is a moderately inflated planet with
a mass of Mp = 0.430 ± 0.032 MJup, a radius
of Rp = 0.960 ± 0.016 RJup, and a bulk
density of ρp = 0.603 ± 0.055 g cm-3.
It orbits a slowly rotating (Prot = 36 ± 6 days) G5 V
star with M⋆ = 0.95 ± 0.04 M⊙,
R⋆ = 0.99 ± 0.02 R⊙,
Teff = 5520 ± 60 K, [M/H] = 0.20 ± 0.05 dex,
that has an age of 7.5 ± 2.0 Gyr. The lack of detectable
planetary occultation with a depth higher than ~10 ppm implies a planet
geometric and Bond albedo of Ag ≤ 0.087 ± 0.008 and
AB ≤ 0.058 ± 0.006, respectively, placing
Kepler-77b among the gas-giant planets with the lowest albedo known so
far. We found neither additional planetary transit signals nor
transit-timing variations at a level of ~0.5 min, in accordance with the
trend that close-in gas giant planets seem to belong to single-planet
systems. The 106 transitsobserved in short-cadence mode by Kepler for
nearly 1.2 years show no detectable signatures of the planet's passage
in front of starspots. We explored the implications of the absence of
detectable spot-crossing events for the inclination of the stellar
spin-axis, the sky-projected spin-orbit obliquity, and the latitude of
magnetically active regions.
Based on observations obtained with the 2.1-m Otto Struve telescope at
McDonald Observatory, Texas, USA.Based on observations obtained with the
Nordic Optical Telescope, operated on the island of La Palma jointly by
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, in the Spanish
Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica
de Canarias, in time allocated by OPTICON and the Spanish Time
Allocation Committee (CAT).The research leading to these results has
received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework
Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number RG226604
(OPTICON).Appendix A is available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org
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