The Curious Case of KOI 4: Confirming Kepler’s First Exoplanet Detection

Journal Article · Wed May 01 04:00:00 EDT 2019 · The Astronomical Journal (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/AB0E8E· OSTI ID:22897356

Chontos, Ashley; Huber, Daniel; Berger, Travis; Hirano, Teruyuki ^[1]; Latham, David W.; Bieryla, Allyson ^[2]; Eylen, Vincent Van ^[3]; Bedding, Timothy R.; Colman, Isabel L. ^[4]; Buchhave, Lars A. ^[5]; Campante, Tiago L. ^[6]; Chaplin, William J.; Davies, Guy ^[7]; Coughlin, Jeff L. ^[8]; Howard, Andrew W. ^[9]; Isaacson, Howard ^[10]

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1. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai‘i, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
2. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
3. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 4 Ivy Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540 (United States)
4. Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA), School of Physics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006 (Australia)
5. DTU Space, National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej 328, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby (Denmark)
6. Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, Rua das Estrelas, PT4150-762 Porto (Portugal)
7. Stellar Astrophysics Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, DK-8000, Aarhus C (Denmark)
8. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
9. Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
10. Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)

The discovery of thousands of planetary systems by Kepler has demonstrated that planets are ubiquitous. However, a major challenge has been the confirmation of Kepler planet candidates, many of which still await confirmation. One of the most enigmatic examples is KOI 4.01, Kepler’s first discovered planet candidate detection (as KOI 1.01, 2.01, and 3.01 were known prior to launch). Here we present the confirmation and characterization of KOI 4.01 (now Kepler-1658), using a combination of asteroseismology and radial velocities. Kepler-1658 is a massive, evolved subgiant (M {sub ⋆} = 1.45 ± 0.06 M {sub ⊙}, R {sub ⋆} = 2.89 ± 0.12 R {sub ⊙}) hosting a massive (M{sub p} = 5.88 ± 0.47 M{sub J}, R{sub p} = 1.07 ± 0.05 R{sub J}) hot Jupiter that orbits every 3.85 days. Kepler-1658 joins a small population of evolved hosts with short-period (≤100 days) planets and is now the closest known planet in terms of orbital period to an evolved star. Because of its uniqueness and short orbital period, Kepler-1658 is a new benchmark system for testing tidal dissipation and hot Jupiter formation theories. Using all four years of the Kepler data, we constrain the orbital decay rate to be P-dot ≤ −0.42 s yr{sup −1}, corresponding to a strong observational limit of Q{sub ⋆}{sup ′} ≥ 4.826 × 10{sup 3} for the tidal quality factor in evolved stars. With an effective temperature of T{sub eff} ∼ 6200 K, Kepler-1658 sits close to the spin–orbit misalignment boundary at ∼6250 K, making it a prime target for follow-up observations to better constrain its obliquity and to provide insight into theories for hot Jupiter formation and migration.

• OSTI ID: 22897356
• Journal Information: The Astronomical Journal (Online), Journal Name: The Astronomical Journal (Online) Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 157; ISSN 1538-3881
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
BENCHMARKS
DETECTION
ORBITS
PLANETS
QUALITY FACTOR
RADIAL VELOCITY
SATELLITES
STARS