Abstract
The orbital eccentricities of directly imaged exoplanets and brown dwarf companions provide clues about their formation and dynamical histories. We combine new high-contrast imaging ...observations of substellar companions obtained primarily with Keck/NIRC2 together with astrometry from the literature to test for differences in the population-level eccentricity distributions of 27 long-period giant planets and brown dwarf companions between 5 and 100 au using hierarchical Bayesian modeling. Orbit fits are performed in a uniform manner for companions with short orbital arcs; this typically results in broad constraints for individual eccentricity distributions, but together as an ensemble, these systems provide valuable insight into their collective underlying orbital patterns. The shape of the eccentricity distribution function for our full sample of substellar companions is approximately flat from
e
= 0–1. When subdivided by companion mass and mass ratio, the underlying distributions for giant planets and brown dwarfs show significant differences. Low mass ratio companions preferentially have low eccentricities, similar to the orbital properties of warm Jupiters found with radial velocities and transits. We interpret this as evidence for in situ formation on largely undisturbed orbits within massive extended disks. Brown dwarf companions exhibit a broad peak at
e
≈ 0.6–0.9 with evidence for a dependence on orbital period. This closely resembles the orbital properties and period-eccentricity trends of wide (1–200 au) stellar binaries, suggesting that brown dwarfs in this separation range predominantly form in a similar fashion. We also report evidence that the “eccentricity dichotomy” observed at small separations extends to planets on wide orbits: the mean eccentricity for the multi-planet system HR 8799 is lower than for systems with single planets. In the future, larger samples and continued astrometric orbit monitoring will help establish whether these eccentricity distributions correlate with other parameters such as stellar host mass, multiplicity, and age.
ABSTRACT We have conducted an angular differential imaging survey with NIRC2 at Keck in search of close-in substellar companions to a sample of seven systems with confirmed planetary-mass companions ...(PMCs) on wide orbits (>50 au). These wide-separation PMCs pose significant challenges to all three possible formation mechanisms: core accretion plus scattering, disk instability, and turbulent fragmentation. We explore the possibility that these companions formed closer in and were scattered out to their present-day locations by searching for other massive bodies at smaller separations. The typical sensitivity for this survey is ΔK ∼ 12.5 at 1″. We identify eight candidate companions, whose masses would reach as low as one Jupiter mass if gravitationally bound. From our multi-epoch astrometry we determine that seven of these are conclusively background objects, while the eighth near DH Tau is ambiguous and requires additional monitoring. We rule out the presence of >7 MJup bodies in these systems down to 15-50 au that could be responsible for scattering. This result combined with the totality of evidence suggests that dynamical scattering is unlikely to have produced this population of PMCs. We detect orbital motion from the companions ROXs 42B b and ROXs 12 b, and from this determine 95% upper limits on the companions' eccentricities of 0.58 and 0.83 respectively. Finally, we find that the 95% upper limit on the occurrence rate of additional planets with masses between 5 and 15 MJup outside of 40 au in systems with PMCs is 54%.
orbitize! is an open-source, object-oriented software package for fitting the orbits of directly imaged objects. It packages the Orbits for the Impatient (OFTI) algorithm and a parallel-tempered ...Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm into a consistent and intuitive Python API. orbitize! makes it easy to run standard astrometric orbit fits; in less than 10 lines of code, users can read in data, perform one fit using OFTI and another using MCMC, and make two publication-ready figures. Extensive pedagogical tutorials, intended to be navigable by both orbit-fitting novices and seasoned experts, are available on our documentation page. We have designed the orbitize! API to be flexible and easy to use/modify for unique cases. orbitize! was designed by members of the exoplanet imaging community to be a central repository for algorithms, techniques, and know-how developed by this community. We intend for it to continue to expand and change as the field progresses and new techniques are developed, and call for community involvement in this process. Complete and up-to-date documentation is available at orbitize.info, and the source code is available at github.com/sblunt/orbitize.
Age is a fundamental parameter of stars, yet in many cases, ages of individual stars are presented without robust estimates of the uncertainty. We have developed a Bayesian framework, BAFFLES, to ...produce the age posterior for a star from its calcium emission strength (log( )) or lithium abundance (Li EW) and B − V color. We empirically determine the likelihood functions for calcium and lithium as functions of age from literature measurements of stars in benchmark clusters with well-determined ages. We use a uniform prior on age, which reflects a uniform star formation rate. The age posteriors we derive for several test cases are consistent with literature ages found from other methods. BAFFLES represents a robust method to determine the age posterior probability distribution for any field star with 0.45 ≤ B − V ≤ 0.9 and a measurement of and/or 0.35 ≤ B − V ≤ 1.9 and measured Li EW. We compile colors, , and Li EW from over 2630 nearby field stars from the literature, and present the derived BAFFLES age posterior for each star.
The HR 8799 system uniquely harbors four young super-Jupiters whose orbits can provide insights into the system's dynamical history and constrain the masses of the planets themselves. Using the ...Gemini Planet Imager, we obtained down to one milliarcsecond precision on the astrometry of these planets. We assessed four-planet orbit models with different levels of constraints and found that assuming the planets are near 1:2:4:8 period commensurabilities, or are coplanar, does not worsen the fit. We added the prior that the planets must have been stable for the age of the system (40 Myr) by running orbit configurations from our posteriors through N-body simulations and varying the masses of the planets. We found that only assuming the planets are both coplanar and near 1:2:4:8 period commensurabilities produces dynamically stable orbits in large quantities. Our posterior of stable coplanar orbits tightly constrains the planets' orbits, and we discuss implications for the outermost planet b shaping the debris disk. A four-planet resonance lock is not necessary for stability up to now. However, planet pairs d and e, and c and d, are each likely locked in two-body resonances for stability if their component masses are above 6 MJup and 7 MJup, respectively. Combining the dynamical and luminosity constraints on the masses using hot-start evolutionary models and a system age of 42 5 Myr, we found the mass of planet b to be 5.8 0.5 MJup, and the masses of planets c, d, and e to be each.
Abstract
Orbital eccentricities directly trace the formation mechanisms and dynamical histories of substellar companions. Here, we study the effect of hyperpriors on the population-level eccentricity ...distributions inferred for the sample of directly imaged substellar companions (brown dwarfs and cold Jupiters) from hierarchical Bayesian modeling (HBM). We find that the choice of hyperprior can have a significant impact on the population-level eccentricity distribution inferred for imaged companions, an effect that becomes more important as the sample size and orbital coverage decrease to values that mirror the existing sample. We reanalyze the current observational sample of imaged giant planets in the 5–100 au range from Bowler et al. and find that the underlying eccentricity distribution implied by the imaged planet sample is broadly consistent with the eccentricity distribution for close-in exoplanets detected using radial velocities. Furthermore, our analysis supports the conclusion from that study that long-period giant planets and brown dwarf eccentricity distributions differ by showing that it is robust to the choice of hyperprior. We release our HBM and forward-modeling code in an open-source Python package,
ePop!
, and make it freely available to the community.
We present SCExAO/CHARIS high-contrast imaging/JHK integral field spectroscopy of κ And b, a directly imaged low-mass companion orbiting a nearby B9V star. We detect κ And b at a high signal-to-noise ...ratio and extract high-precision spectrophotometry using a new forward-modeling algorithm for (A-)LOCI complementary to KLIP-FM developed by Pueyo et al. κ And b's spectrum best resembles that of a low-gravity L0-L1 dwarf (L0-L1γ). Its spectrum and luminosity are very well matched by 2MASS J0141-4633 and several other 12.5-15 MJ free-floating members of the 40 Myr old Tuc-Hor Association, consistent with a system age derived from recent interferometric results for the primary, a companion mass at/near the deuterium-burning limit ( MJ), and a companion-to-primary mass ratio characteristic of other directly imaged planets (q ∼ ). We did not unambiguously identify additional, more closely orbiting companions brighter and more massive than κ And b down to ∼ 0 3 (15 au). SCExAO/CHARIS and complementary Keck/NIRC2 astrometric points reveal clockwise orbital motion. Modeling points toward a likely eccentric orbit: a subset of acceptable orbits include those that are aligned with the star's rotation axis. However, κ And b's semimajor axis is plausibly larger than 55 au and in a region where disk instability could form massive companions. Deeper high-contrast imaging of κ And and low-resolution spectroscopy from extreme adaptive optics systems such as SCExAO/CHARIS and higher-resolution spectroscopy from Keck/OSIRIS or, later, IRIS on the Thirty Meter Telescope could help to clarify κ And b's chemistry and whether its spectrum provides an insight into its formation environment.
We expand on the results of Nielsen et al., using the null result for giant extrasolar planets around the 118 target stars from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) NACO H- and Ks-band planet search ...(conducted by Masciadri and collaborators in 2003 and 2004), the VLT and MMT Simultaneous Differential Imager survey, and the Gemini Deep Planet Survey to set constraints on the population of giant extrasolar planets. Our analysis is extended to include the planet luminosity models of Fortney et al., as well as the correlation between stellar mass and frequency of giant planets found by Johnson et al. Doubling the sample size of FGKM stars strengthens our conclusions: a model for extrasolar giant planets with power laws for mass and semimajor axis as given by Cumming et al. cannot, with 95% confidence, have planets beyond 65 AU, compared to the value of 94 AU reported by Nielsen et al., using the models of Baraffe et al. When the Johnson et al. correction for stellar mass (which gives fewer Jupiter-mass companions to M stars with respect to solar-type stars) is applied, however, this limit moves out to 82 AU. For the relatively new Fortney et al. models, which predict fainter planets across most of parameter space, these upper limits, with and without a correction for stellar mass, are 182 and 234 AU, respectively.
We report the detection of a transiting hot Neptune exoplanet orbiting TOI-824 (SCR J1448-5735), a nearby (d = 64 pc) K4V star, using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The newly ...discovered planet has a radius Rp = 2.93 0.20 and an orbital period of 1.393 days. Radial velocity measurements using the Planet Finder Spectrograph and the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher spectrograph confirm the existence of the planet, and we estimate its mass to be 18.47 1.84 . The planet's mean density is = 4.03 , making it more than twice as dense as Neptune. TOI-824 b's high equilibrium temperature makes the planet likely to have a cloud-free atmosphere, and thus it is an excellent candidate for follow-up atmospheric studies. The detectability of TOI-824 b's atmosphere from both ground and space is promising and could lead to the detailed characterization of the most irradiated small planet at the edge of the hot Neptune desert that has retained its atmosphere to date.
We describe a Bayesian rejection-sampling algorithm designed to efficiently compute posterior distributions of orbital elements for data covering short fractions of long-period exoplanet orbits. Our ...implementation of this method, Orbits for the Impatient (OFTI), converges up to several orders of magnitude faster than two implementations of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) in this regime. We illustrate the efficiency of our approach by showing that OFTI calculates accurate posteriors for all existing astrometry of the exoplanet 51 Eri b up to 100 times faster than a Metropolis-Hastings MCMC. We demonstrate the accuracy of OFTI by comparing our results for several orbiting systems with those of various MCMC implementations, finding the output posteriors to be identical within shot noise. We also describe how our algorithm was used to successfully predict the location of 51 Eri b six months in the future based on less than three months of astrometry. Finally, we apply OFTI to 10 long-period exoplanets and brown dwarfs, all but one of which have been monitored over less than 3% of their orbits, producing fits to their orbits from astrometric records in the literature.
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