Abstract
The first confirmed interstellar interloper in our Solar system, 1I/‘Oumuamua, is likely to be a minor body ejected from another star, but its brief flyby and faintness made it difficult to ...study. Two remarkable properties are its large (up to 2.5 mag) rotational variability and its motion relative to the Sun before encounter. The former suggests an extremely elongated shape (aspect ratio ≥ 10) and the latter an origin from the protoplanetary disc of a young star in a nearby association. Against expectations, it is also not comet-like. 1I/‘Oumuamua’s variability can also be explained if it is a contact binary composed of near-equilibrium ellipsoidal components and heterogeneous surfaces, i.e. brighter, dust-mantled inner-facing hemispheres and darker, dust-free outer-facing poles. Such shapes are a plausible outcome of radiation, tides, and collisions in systems where planets are clearing planetesimal discs. The probability that 1I/‘Oumuamua has the same motion as a young (≲100 Myr) stellar association by coincidence is <1 per cent. If it is young, its detection versus more numerous, older counterparts could be explained as a selection effect due to darkening of surfaces by Galactic cosmic rays and loss of dust. 1I/‘Oumuamua’s apparent lack of ices can be explained if ejected rocky planetesimals are characteristically smaller and thus far more numerous than their icy counterparts: the Solar system may currently host several such objects captured by the combined gravity of Jupiter and the Sun.
Abstract
All water-covered rocky planets in the inner habitable zones of solar-type stars will inevitably experience a catastrophic runaway climate due to increasing stellar luminosity and limits to ...outgoing infrared radiation from wet greenhouse atmospheres. Reflectors or scatterers placed near Earth's inner Lagrange point (
$\mathcal {L}_1$
) have been proposed as a “geoengineering’ solution to anthropogenic climate change and an advanced version of this could modulate incident irradiation over many Gyr or ‘rescue’ a planet from the interior of the habitable zone. The distance of the starshade from the planet that minimizes its mass is 1.6 times the Earth-
$\mathcal {L}_1$
distance. Such a starshade would have to be similar in size to the planet and the mutual occultations during planetary transits could produce a characteristic maximum at mid-transit in the light curve. Because of a fortuitous ratio of densities, Earth-size planets around G dwarf stars present the best opportunity to detect such an artefact. The signal would be persistent and is potentially detectable by a future space photometry mission to characterize transiting planets. The signal could be distinguished from natural phenomenon, i.e. starspots or cometary dust clouds, by its shape, persistence and transmission spectrum.
A minimum mass nebula for M dwarfs Gaidos, E
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters,
09/2017, Letnik:
470, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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Odprti dostop
Abstract
Recently revealed differences in planets around M dwarf versus solar-type stars could arise from differences in their primordial discs and surveys of T Tauri stars find a correlation between ...stellar mass and disc mass. ‘Minimum’ discs have been reconstructed for the Solar system and solar-type stars and here this exercise is performed for M dwarfs using Kepler-detected planets. Distribution of planet mass between current orbits produces a disc with total mass of ≈0.009 M⊙ and a power-law profile with index α = 2.2. Disc reconstruction from the output of a forward model of planet formation indicates that the effect of detection bias on disc profile is slight and that the observed scatter in planet masses and semimajor axes are consistent with a universal disc profile. This nominal M dwarf disc is more centrally concentrated than those inferred around the solar-type stars observed by Kepler, and the mass surface density beyond 0.02 au is sufficient for in situ accretion of planets as single embryos. The mass of refractory solids within 0.5 au is 5.6 M⊕ compared to 4 M⊕ for solar-type stars in contrast with the trend with total disc mass. The total solid beyond 0.5 au is sufficient for the core of at least one giant planet.
We classified the reddest (r − J > 2.2) stars observed by the NASA Kepler mission into main-sequence dwarf or evolved giant stars and determined the properties of 4216 M dwarfs based on a comparison ...of available photometry with that of nearby calibrator stars, as well as available proper motions and spectra. We revised the properties of candidate transiting planets using the stellar parameters, high-resolution imaging to identify companion stars, and, in the case of binaries, fitting light curves to identify the likely planet host. In 49 of 54 systems, we validated the primary as the host star. We inferred the intrinsic distribution of M dwarf planets using the method of iterative Monte Carlo simulation. We compared several models of planet orbital geometry and clustering and found that one where planets are exponentially distributed and almost precisely coplanar best describes the distribution of multiplanet systems. We determined that Kepler M dwarfs host an average of 2.2 ± 0.3 planets with radii of 1–4 R⊕ and orbital periods of 1.5–180 d. The radius distribution peaks at ∼1.2 R⊕ and is essentially zero at 4 R⊕, although we identify three giant planet candidates other than the previously confirmed Kepler-45b. There is suggestive but not significant evidence that the radius distribution varies with orbital period. The distribution with logarithmic orbital period is flat except for a decline for orbits less than a few days. 12 candidate planets, including two Jupiter-size objects, experience an irradiance below the threshold level for a runaway greenhouse on an Earth-like planet and are thus in a ‘habitable zone’.
AU Mic b is a Neptune-sized planet on an 8.47-day orbit around the nearest pre-main sequence (~20 Myr) star to the Sun, the bright (
V
= 8.81) M dwarf AU Mic. The planet was preliminary detected in ...Doppler radial velocity time series and recently confirmed to be transiting with data from the TESS mission. AU Mic b is likely to be cooling and contracting and might be accompanied by a second, more massive planet, in an outer orbit. Here, we present the observations of the transit of AU Mic b using ESPRESSO on the Very Large Telescope. We obtained a high-resolution time series of spectra to measure the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, to constrain the spin-orbit alignment of the star and planet, and to simultaneously attempt to retrieve the planet’s atmospheric transmission spectrum. These observations allowed us to study, for the first time, the early phases of the dynamical evolution of young systems. We applied different methodologies to derive the spin-orbit angle of AU Mic b, and all of them retrieve values consistent with the planet being aligned with the rotation plane of the star. We determined a conservative spin-orbit angle
λ
value of −2.96
−10.30
+10.44
degrees, indicative that the formation and migration of the planets of the AU Mic system occurred within the disc. Unfortunately, and despite the large signal-to-noise ratio of our measurements, the degree of stellar activity prevented us from detecting any features from the planetary atmosphere. In fact, our results suggest that transmission spectroscopy for recently formed planets around active young stars is going to remain very challenging, if at all possible, for the near future.
ABSTRACT We present ten young ( 10 Myr) late-K and M dwarf stars observed in K2 Campaign 2 that host protoplanetary disks and exhibit quasi-periodic or aperiodic dimming events. Their optical light ...curves show ∼10-20 dips in flux over the 80-day observing campaign with durations of ∼0.5-2 days and depths of up to ∼40%. These stars are all members of the Ophiuchus (∼1 Myr) or Upper Scorpius (∼10 Myr) star-forming regions. To investigate the nature of these "dippers" we obtained: optical and near-infrared spectra to determine stellar properties and identify accretion signatures; adaptive optics imaging to search for close companions that could cause optical variations and/or influence disk evolution; and millimeter-wavelength observations to constrain disk dust and gas masses. The spectra reveal Li i absorption and H emission consistent with stellar youth (<50 Myr), but also accretion rates spanning those of classical and weak-line T Tauri stars. Infrared excesses are consistent with protoplanetary disks extending to within ∼10 stellar radii in most cases; however, the sub-millimeter observations imply disk masses that are an order of magnitude below those of typical protoplanetary disks. We find a positive correlation between dip depth and WISE-2 (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer-2) excess, which we interpret as evidence that the dipper phenomenon is related to occulting structures in the inner disk, although this is difficult to reconcile with the weakly accreting aperiodic dippers. We consider three mechanisms to explain the dipper phenomenon: inner disk warps near the co-rotation radius related to accretion; vortices at the inner disk edge produced by the Rossby Wave Instability; and clumps of circumstellar material related to planetesimal formation.
ABSTRACT
Spectroscopic transit detection of constituents in winds from ‘evaporating’ planets on close-in transiting orbits could provide desperately needed information on the composition, formation, ...and orbital evolution of such objects. We obtained high-resolution optical spectra of the host stars during a single transit of Kepler-1520b and two transits of K2-22b to search for transient, Doppler-shifted absorption in the D lines of neutral sodium. Sodium should be released in the same silicate vapour wind that lofts the dust responsible for the periodic ‘dips’ in the light curve. We do not detect any absorption lines with depths >30 per cent at the predicted Doppler-shifted wavelengths during any of the transits. Detection sensitivity is limited by instrumental resolution that dilutes the saturated lines, and blurring of the lines by Doppler acceleration due to the short orbital period of the planet and long integration times for these faint stars. A model of neutral sodium production, escape, and ionization by UV radiation suggests that clouds of partially ionized sodium that are comparable in size to the host stars and optically thick in the D lines could accompany the planets. We consider the prospects for future detections brought about by the TESS all-sky survey of brighter stars and the advent of high-resolution spectrographs on Extremely Large Telescopes.
We present an all-sky catalogue of 2970 nearby (d ≲ 50 pc), bright (J < 9) M- or late K-type dwarf stars, 86 per cent of which have been confirmed by spectroscopy. This catalogue will be useful for ...searches for Earth-size and possibly Earth-like planets by future space-based transit missions and ground-based infrared Doppler radial velocity surveys. Stars were selected from the SUPERBLINK proper motion catalogue according to absolute magnitudes, spectra, or a combination of reduced proper motions and photometric colours. From our spectra, we determined gravity-sensitive indices, and identified and removed 0.2 per cent of these as interloping hotter or evolved stars. 13 per cent of the stars exhibit Hα emission, an indication of stellar magnetic activity and possible youth. The mean metallicity is Fe/H = −0.07 with a standard deviation of 0.22 dex, similar to nearby solar-type stars. We determined stellar effective temperatures by least-squares fitting of spectra to model predictions calibrated by fits to stars with established bolometric temperatures, and estimated radii, luminosities, and masses using empirical relations. Six per cent of stars with images from integral field spectra are resolved doubles. We inferred the planet population around M dwarfs using Kepler data and applied this to our catalogue to predict detections by future exoplanet surveys.
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