KEPLER-1647B: THE LARGEST AND LONGEST-PERIOD KEPLER TRANSITING CIRCUMBINARY PLANET
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mail Code 665, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182 (United States)
- SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii-Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Physical Science, The University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, NE 68849 (United States)
- McDonald Observatory, The University of Texas as Austin, Austin, TX 78712-0259 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, 428A Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- Atalaia Group and Crow-Observatory, Portalegre (Portugal)
- Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), Advanced Astronomy and Space Science Division, Daejeon 305-348 (Korea, Republic of)
- Department of Astronomy, University of California Berkeley, 501 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
- NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv (Israel)
We report the discovery of a new Kepler transiting circumbinary planet (CBP). This latest addition to the still-small family of CBPs defies the current trend of known short-period planets orbiting near the stability limit of binary stars. Unlike the previous discoveries, the planet revolving around the eclipsing binary system Kepler-1647 has a very long orbital period (∼1100 days) and was at conjunction only twice during the Kepler mission lifetime. Due to the singular configuration of the system, Kepler-1647b is not only the longest-period transiting CBP at the time of writing, but also one of the longest-period transiting planets. With a radius of 1.06 ± 0.01 R {sub Jup}, it is also the largest CBP to date. The planet produced three transits in the light curve of Kepler-1647 (one of them during an eclipse, creating a syzygy) and measurably perturbed the times of the stellar eclipses, allowing us to measure its mass, 1.52 ± 0.65 M {sub Jup}. The planet revolves around an 11-day period eclipsing binary consisting of two solar-mass stars on a slightly inclined, mildly eccentric ( e {sub bin} = 0.16), spin-synchronized orbit. Despite having an orbital period three times longer than Earth’s, Kepler-1647b is in the conservative habitable zone of the binary star throughout its orbit.
- OSTI ID:
- 22679519
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 827, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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