A probable giant planet imaged in the beta Pictoris disk. VLT/NaCo deep L'-band imaging

By Anne-Marie Lagrange, D. Gratadour, G. Chauvin, T. Fusco, David Ehrenreich, David Mouillet, G. Rousset, D. Rouan, F. Allard, E. Gendron and 5 more. 2008

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Context: Since the discovery of its dusty disk in 1984, β Pictoris has become the prototype of young early-type planetary systems, and there are now various indications that a massive Jovian planet is orbiting the star at ~10 AU. However, no planets have been detected around this star so far. Aims: Our goal was to investigate the close environment of β Pic, searching for planetary companion(s). Methods: Deep adaptive-optics L'-band images of β Pic were recorded using the NaCo instrument at the Very Large Telescope. Results: A faint point-like signal is detected at a projected distance of ≃8 AU from the star, within the northeastern extension of the dust disk. Various tests were made to rule out possible instrumental or atmospheric artefacts at a good confidence level. The probability of a foreground or background contaminant is extremely low, based in addition on the analysis of previous deep HST images. Its L'=11.2 apparent magnitude would indicate a typical temperature of ~1500 K and a mass of ~8 M_Jup. If confirmed, it could explain the main morphological and dynamical peculiarities of the β Pic system. The present detection is unique among A-stars by the proximity of the resolved planet to its parent star. Its closeness and location inside the β Pic disk suggest a formation process by core accretion or disk instabilities rather than binary-like formation processes. Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Chile, ESO (runs 072.C-0624(B) and 60.A-9026(A)) and on observations made with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/40387b15aa4fc174d27b6c6df95f45b5978d9228

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Citations in the corpus

• A COMBINED SUBARU/VLT/MMT 1–5 μm STUDY OF PLANETS ORBITING HR 8799: IMPLICATIONS FOR ATMOSPHERIC PROPERTIES, MASSES, AND FORMATION (2011, background): “Along with Fomalhaut and β Pic, it is also the only imaged system with companion mass ratios and separations reasonably close to the giant planets in the Solar System (Kalas et al. 2008; Lagrange et al. 2009, 2010)10.”
• A COLD NEPTUNE-MASS PLANET OGLE-2007-BLG-368Lb: Cold neptunes are common (2009, background): “Several planetary candidates have also been detected via direct imaging (Marois et al. 2008; Lagrange et al. 2009), and astrometry (Pravdo & Shaklan 2009).”
• DETECTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF EXOPLANETS AND DISKS USING PROJECTIONS ON KARHUNEN–LOÈVE EIGENIMAGES (2012, background): “…structures orbiting nearby stars were 1Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore MD 21218, USA obtained relatively recently (Marois et al. 2008a; Kalas et al. 2008; Lagrange et al. 2009, 2010; Marois et al. 2010b; Kalas 2011; Janson et al. 2012; Kraus & Ireland 2012).”