DISCOVERY OF A PROBABLE 4–5 JUPITER-MASS EXOPLANET TO HD 95086 BY DIRECT IMAGING

By J. Rameau, G. Chauvin, Anne-Marie Lagrange, Anthony Boccaletti, Sascha P. Quanz, M. Bonnefoy, Julien H. Girard, P. Delorme, S. Desidera, H. Klahr and 3 more. 2013

172 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Direct imaging has only begun to inventory the population of gas giant planets on wide orbits around young stars in the solar neighborhood. Following this approach, we carried out a deep imaging survey in the near-infrared using VLT/NaCo to search for substellar companions. Here we report the discovery of a probable companion orbiting the young (10–17 Myr), dusty, early-type (A8) star HD 95086 at 56 AU in L′ (3.8 μm) images. This discovery is based on observations with more than a year time lapse. Our first epoch clearly revealed the source at ≃ 10σ, while our second epoch lacks good observing conditions, yielding a ≃ 3σ detection. Various tests were thus made to rule out possible artifacts. This recovery is consistent with the signal at the first epoch but requires cleaner confirmation. Nevertheless, our astrometric precision suggests that the companion is comoving with the star with a 3σ confidence level. The planetary nature of the source is reinforced by a non-detection in the Ks-band (2.18 μm) images according to its possible extremely red Ks–L′ color. Conversely, background contamination is rejected with good confidence level. The luminosity yields a predicted mass of about 4–5 MJup (at 10–17 Myr) using “hot-start” evolutionary models, making HD 95086 b the exoplanet with the lowest mass ever imaged around a star.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/45342a73e8ee44272cd91760042a2441008edbfa

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Bowler
2. Michael C. Liu
3. T. Dupuy
4. K. Allers
5. E. Shkolnik
6. C. Mordasini
7. R. Doyon
8. Th. Henning

In Instrumentation

1. B. Bowler
2. Michael C. Liu
3. T. Dupuy
4. K. Allers
5. E. Shkolnik
6. R. Doyon
7. R. Gratton
8. B. Macintosh

Citations in the corpus

• Discovery of a warm, dusty giant planet around HIP 65426 (2017, background): “On the other hand, HIP 65426 b is probably more massive and hotter than the planet HD 95086 b (4 − 5 MJup at 56 au, L8-type, 17 Myr; Rameau et al. 2013).”
• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, methodology): “Indeed, many stars hosting multi-component debris disks have now been targeted with high-contrast imaging and do not appear to harbor massive planets (Rameau et al. 2013a; Wahhaj et al. 2013b; Janson et al. 2013c; Meshkat et al. 2015a).”
• The VAST Survey - III. The multiplicity of A-type stars within 75 pc (2013, methodology): “…the subject of deep AO imaging searches for extreme mass ratio planetary companions (e.g. Vigan et al. 2012; Nielsen et al. 2013), with several planetary systems discovered (Kalas et al. 2008; Marois et al. 2008; Lagrange et al. 2009; Marois et al. 2010; Carson et al. 2013; Rameau et al. 2013).”
• THE GEMINI/NICI PLANET-FINDING CAMPAIGN: THE FREQUENCY OF PLANETS AROUND YOUNG MOVING GROUP STARS (2013, background): “To obtain photometry, we thus subtracted 14 HD 12894B was also detected in a single epoch in the survey of Rameau et al. (2013a), who argued that it was a likely physical companion.”
• THE HAWAII INFRARED PARALLAX PROGRAM. II. YOUNG ULTRACOOL FIELD DWARFS (2016, background): “…Luhman et al. 2006; Lafrenière et al. 2008; Lagrange et al. 2009, 2010; Ireland et al. 2011; Janson et al. 2012; Carson et al. 2013; Kuzuhara et al. 2013; Rameau et al. 2013; Bailey et al. 2014; Macintosh et al. 2015; Gauza et al. 2015), possibly suggesting a range of origins for these systems.”