The HARPS survey for southern extra-solar planets. II. A 14 Earth-masses exoplanet around μ Arae

By Nuno C. Santos, F. Bouchy, M. Mayor, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, S. Udry, C. Lovis, M. Bazot, W. Benz, Jean-Loup Bertaux and 6 more. 2004

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In this letter we present the discovery of a very light planetary companion to the star mu Ara (HD160691). The planet orbits its host once every 9.5days, and induces a sinusoidal radial velocity signal with a semi-amplitude of 4.1 m/s, the smallest Doppler amplitude detected so far. These values imply a mass of m2 sini = 14 earth-masses. This detection represents the discovery of a planet with a mass slightly smaller than that of Uranus, the smallest ``ice giant" in our Solar System. Whether this planet can be considered an ice giant or a super-earth planet is discussed in the context of the core-accretion and migration models.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3c65ed50c2a5824341e7f9fd9551d052081ed5e3

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A diagram to determine the evaporation status of extrasolar planets (2006, background): “Other possibilities include gaseous Neptune-like planets, super-Earth (Santos et al. 2004) or ocean-planets (Kutchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004).”
Chemical abundances of 1111 FGK stars from the HARPS GTO planet search program - Galactic stellar populations and planets (2012, methodology): “…the long-term stability of the HARPS spectrograph (Mayor et al. 2003) allowed discovering a fairly large number of new planets, including the large majority of the known planets with masses near the mass of Neptune or below (e.g. Santos et al. 2004a; Lovis et al. 2006; Mayor et al. 2009, 2011).”
Mass-Radius Relationships for Solid Exoplanets (2007, background): “The unexpected diversity of exoplanets includes fourteen exoplanets with Mp sin i < 21M⊕ (Butler et al. 2004; McArthur et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2004; Rivera et al. 2005; Bonfils et al. 2005; Vogt et al. 2005; Lovis et al. 2006; Udry et al. 2006; Bonfils et al. 2007; Melo et al. 2007), including…”
TEN NEW AND UPDATED MULTIPLANET SYSTEMS AND A SURVEY OF EXOPLANETARY SYSTEMS (2008, background): “This has allowed for the detection of ever weaker signals and led to the discovery of some of the lowest-mass planets known, including (among others): 55 Cnc e (McArthur et al. 2004), GJ 876d (Rivera et al. 2005), the triple system HD 69830 (Lovis et al. 2006), and µ Ara d (Santos et al. 2004).”
Spectroscopic metallicities for planet-host stars: Extending the samples (2005, methodology): “However, and as discussed in Santos et al. (2004b), current data still cannot exclude that giant planets may also be formed by the disk instability model (Boss 1997, 2002; Mayer et al. 2002), in particular planets orbiting low metallicity stars.”
On the Location of the Snow Line in a Protoplanetary Disk (2006, background): “…Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel 3Astronomy Department, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 4Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow Some of the extra-solar planets seem to have masses in this range (McArthur et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2004); they would serve as cores if there were gas for them to accrete.”
DHP Framework: Digital Health Passports Using Blockchain - Use case on international tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic (2004, background): “Currently the small reflex motion of the star due to the orbiting planet can only be detected for mplanet & 10m⊕ (Butler et al. 2004; McArthur et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2004).”
Extrasolar planet population synthesis - II. Statistical comparison with observations (2009, background): “The strong correlation between stellar metallicity, and the likelihood to find giant planets, the so called “metallicity effect”, is possibly the best established observational constraint (e.g. Gonzales 1997; Santos et al. 2004b; Fischer & Valenti 2005).”
On the evolution of multiple protoplanets embedded in a protostellar disc (2006, background): “…and COROT will extend the discovery-space of extrasolar planets further, covering the sub-Neptune mass range where current observations typically cannot detect planets (e.g. Bonfils et al. 2005; Marcy et al. 2005; Rivera et al. 2005; Vogt et al. 2005; Santos et al. 2004; Butler et al. 2003, 2004).”
The HARPS search for Earth-like planets in the habitable zone - I. Very low-mass planets around HD 20794, HD 85512, and HD 192310 (2011, background): “This new era started in 2004 with the discovery of several Neptune-mass planets such as μAra c (Santos et al. 2004; see also Pepe et al. 2007, for an update of the parameters), 55 Cnc (McArthur et al. 2004), and GJ 436 (Butler et al. 2004).”
Planetary detection limits taking into account stellar noise - I. Observational strategies to reduce stellar oscillation and granulation effects (2010, background): “This has become possible thanks to the stability and precision of new generation high-resolution spectrographs, and because of dedicated observational strategies allowing to average out perturbationscoming from stellar oscillations (Santos et al. 2004).”
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets - XVII. Super-Earth and Neptune-mass planets in multiple planet systems HD 47 186 and HD 181 433 (2008, background): “…than 1 m s−1 (Pepe et al. 2004; Lovis et al. 2007), HARPS has discovered several Neptune-mass and SuperEarth exoplanets around solar-type stars (Santos et al. 2004; Udry et al. 2006; Lovis et al. 2006; Melo et al. 2008; Mayor et al. 2009) and M dwarfs (Bonfils et al. 2005; Udry et al. 2007a;…”
SWEET-Cat: A catalogue of parameters for Stars With ExoplanETs - I. New atmospheric parameters and masses for 48 stars with planets (2013, methodology): “Note that the use of different spectrographs is not expected to introduce significant systematic differences in the derived stellar parameters, as can be seen from previous studies (e.g. Santos et al. 2004b).”
Spectroscopic parameters for 451 stars in the HARPS GTO planet search program - Stellar [Fe/H] and the frequency of exo-Neptunes (2008, methodology): “The well-established correlation between the presence of a giant planet and the metallicity of its host star (Santos et al. 2004b; Fischer & Valenti 2005) is illustrated by our results.”
HAT-P-11b: A SUPER-NEPTUNE PLANET TRANSITING A BRIGHT K STAR IN THE KEPLER FIELD (2009, background): “It was a major advance when Santos et al. (2004) discovered the Mp sin i = 14 M⊕ planet around µ Ara, McArthur et al. (2004) detected a Neptune-mass planet around 55 Cnc, and Butler et al. (2004) found a ∼ 21M⊕ mass planet around GJ 436.”
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. X. A m sin i = 11 M_â planet around the nearby spotted M dwarf GJ 674 (2007, background): “…improvement of the radial-velocity techniques resulted in the quasi-simultaneous discovery of three Neptune-mass planets around µ Ara (mp sin i = 14 M⊕ – Santos et al. 2004), ρ Cnc (mp sin i = 14 M⊕ – McArthur et al. 2004), and GJ 436 (mp sin i = 23 M⊕ – Butler et al. 2004; Maness et al. 2006).”
The Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect and Analytic Radial Velocity Curves for Transiting Extrasolar Planetary Systems (2004, background): “In light of the most recent sensitivity achieved by HARPS (Santos et al. 2004; 1 m s 1), our error assignment may still be conservative if the error is not dominated by other possible systematic errors.”
Five New Extrasolar Planets (2005, background): “Remarkably, 20% of the most metal-rich stars, ½Fe=H > 0:3, harbor planets, while less than 3% of the metal-poor stars, ½Fe=H < 0:5, harbor giant planets (Fischer & Valenti 2005; Santos et al. 2001, 2004a; Reid 2002).”
Five Planets Orbiting 55 Cancri (2007, background): “This planet was one of the first three Neptune-mass planets discovered, along with the planets orbiting GJ 436 (Butler et al. 2004; Maness et al. 2007) and µ Arae (Santos et al. 2004).”
TESTING IN SITU ASSEMBLY WITH THE KEPLER PLANET CANDIDATE SAMPLE (2013, background): “Furthermore, multiple detection techniques are now able to probe below 10 M⊕ (Wolszczan & Frail 1992; McArthur et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2004; Rivera et al. 2005; Beaulieu et al. 2006; Lovis et al. 2006; Charbonneau et al. 2009; Queloz et al. 2009; Mayor et al. 2009; Batalha et al. 2011),…”