DIRECT IMAGING OF A COLD JOVIAN EXOPLANET IN ORBIT AROUND THE SUN-LIKE STAR GJ 504

By M. Kuzuhara, Motohide Tamura, T. Kudo, M. Janson, R. Kandori, Timothy D. Brandt, C. Thalmann, D. Spiegel, B. Biller, J. Carson and 47 more. 2013

201 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Several exoplanets have recently been imaged at wide separations of >10 AU from their parent stars. These span a limited range of ages (<50 Myr) and atmospheric properties, with temperatures of 800–1800 K and very red colors (J − H > 0.5 mag), implying thick cloud covers. Furthermore, substantial model uncertainties exist at these young ages due to the unknown initial conditions at formation, which can lead to an order of magnitude of uncertainty in the modeled planet mass. Here, we report the direct-imaging discovery of a Jovian exoplanet around the Sun-like star GJ 504, detected as part of the SEEDS survey. The system is older than all other known directly imaged planets; as a result, its estimated mass remains in the planetary regime independent of uncertainties related to choices of initial conditions in the exoplanet modeling. Using the most common exoplanet cooling model, and given the system age of 160 Myr, GJ 504b has an estimated mass of 4 Jupiter masses, among the lowest of directly imaged planets. Its projected separation of 43.5 AU exceeds the typical outer boundary of ∼30 AU predicted for the core accretion mechanism. GJ 504b is also significantly cooler (510 K) and has a bluer color (J − H = −0.23 mag) than previously imaged exoplanets, suggesting a largely cloud-free atmosphere accessible to spectroscopic characterization. Thus, it has the potential of providing novel insights into the origins of giant planets as well as their atmospheric properties.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/418603b69c71bc066fce4046349c097dac73fb63

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michael C. Liu
2. B. Bowler
3. T. Dupuy
4. K. Allers
5. E. Shkolnik
6. D. Weinberg
7. C. Hirata
8. Motohide Tamura

Citations in the corpus

• PLANETS AROUND LOW-MASS STARS (PALMS). IV. THE OUTER ARCHITECTURE OF M DWARF PLANETARY SYSTEMS (2014, background): “A total of seven gas-giant planets have been directly imaged to date around three high mass (1.2–1.9 M⊙) young A-type stars and one G star (HR 8799, β Pic, HD 95086, GJ 504; Marois et al. 2008, Marois et al. 2010b, Rameau et al. 2013b, Kuzuhara et al. 2013).”
• Dawes Review 6: The Impact of Companions on Stellar Evolution (2016, background): “Imaging surveys able to detect high contrast are few and have detected only a handful of planets out to tens of AU (Soummer et al., 2011; Kuzuhara et al., 2013).”
• Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report (2015, background): “They have produced a dozen notable successes (Kalas et al. 2008, Marois et al. 2008, Lagrange et al. 2010, Rameau et al. 2013, Kuzuhara et al. 2013, Currie et al. 2014, Kraus et al. 2014) but the systems discovered, with supermassive (3-10 MJ) young (<100 Myr) planets in wide (20-200 AU) orbits are…”
• THE GEMINI/NICI PLANET-FINDING CAMPAIGN: THE FREQUENCY OF PLANETS AROUND YOUNG MOVING GROUP STARS (2013, methodology): “Only one planet has been directly imaged to date around a main-sequence solar analogue (GJ 504b; Kuzuhara et al. 2013).”
• THE HAWAII INFRARED PARALLAX PROGRAM. II. YOUNG ULTRACOOL FIELD DWARFS (2016, background): “…(25) Esposito et al. (2013); (26) Faherty et al. (2012); (27) Gatewood & Coban (2009); (28) Goldman et al. (2010); (29) Knapp et al. (2004); (30) Kuzuhara et al. (2013); (31) Leggett et al. (1998); (32) Leggett et al. (2002); (33) Liu et al. (2013b); (34) Lowrance et al. (1999); (35) Lowrance…”
• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, background): “GJ 504 and κ And are recent examples of young field stars with faint companions that were initially thought to have planetary masses (Kuzuhara et al. 2013; Carson et al. 2013) but which follow-up studies showed are probably older (Hinkley et al. 2013; Bonnefoy et al. 2014a; Fuhrmann & Chini 2015;…”