The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets - VI. A Neptune-mass planet around the nearby M dwarf Gl 581

By X. Bonfils, T. Forveille, X. Delfosse, S. Udry, M. Mayor, C. Perrier, F. Bouchy, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, Jean-Loup Bertaux. 2005

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report the discovery of a Neptune-mass planet around Gl 581 (M3V, M = 0.31 ), based on precise Doppler measurements with the HARPS spectrograph at La Silla Observatory. The radial velocities reveal a circular orbit of period P = 5.366 days and semi-amplitude K1 = 13.2 m s-1. The resulting minimum mass of the planet ( ) is only 0.052 = 0.97 = 16.6 making Gl 581b one of the lightest extra-solar planet known to date. The Gl 581 planetary system is only the third centered on an M dwarf, joining the Gl 876 three-planet system and the lone planet around Gl 436. Its discovery reinforces the emerging tendency of such planets to be of low mass, and found at short orbital periods. The statistical properties of the planets orbiting M dwarfs do not seem to match a simple mass scaling of their counterparts around solar-type stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af5c2dde73a4121c6ea22365f98f4e6757d81589

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Johnson
2. Nuno C. Santos
3. D. Charbonneau
4. C. Mordasini
5. Debra A. Fischer
6. M. Mayor
7. G. Marcy
8. S. Udry

Citations in the corpus

• A New Planet around an M Dwarf: Revealing a Correlation between Exoplanets and Stellar Mass (2007, methodology): “…al. 2007); the inner, MP sin i = 5.9 M⊕ planet around GJ 876 (Rivera et al. 2005); the MP sin i = 11 M⊕ planet orbiting GJ 674 (Bonfils et al. 2007); and the triple system orbiting GJ 581, which consists of planets with minimum masses 16.6 M⊕, 5 M⊕ and 8 M⊕ (Bonfils et al. 2005b; Udry et al. 2007).”
• The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs (2018, unknown): “…et al. 2017), GJ 3998 (Affer et al. 2016), GJ 433 (Bonfils et al. 2013), GJ 447 (Bonfils et al. 2018), GJ 536 (Suárez Mascareño et al. 2017), GJ 581 (Bonfils et al. 2005), GJ 628 (Wright et al. 2016), GJ 676 A (Anglada-Escudé & Tuomi 2012), GJ 667 C (Bonfils et al. 2013), GJ 876 (Rivera Article…”
• Detection Limits from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program (2006, background): “…surveys now routinely achieve precisions of 2-3 m s−1 (e.g. Cochran et al. 2004), facilitating the detection of ever-lower-mass companions, such as the “hot Neptunes” (Bonfils et al. 2005; McArthur et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2004b; Butler et al. 2004) and even “super-Earths” (Rivera et al. 2005).”
• The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XI. Super-Earths (5 and 8 M{⊕}) in a 3-planet system (2007, methodology): “The photometric stability will however need to be checked at high precision on longer timescales. iii) Very interestingly, Gl 581 has a sub-solar metallicity ([Fe/H] =−0.25 in (Bonfils et al. 2005a); [Fe/H] =−0.33 in (Bean et al. 2006)), contrarily to most planet-host stars.”
• SWEET-Cat: A catalogue of parameters for Stars With ExoplanETs - I. New atmospheric parameters and masses for 48 stars with planets (2013, background): “Iis now widely accepted that the frequency of giant planets orbiting (lower mass) M-dwarfs is considerably lower than the one found for FGK dwarfs (Bonfils et al. 2005b, 2011; Endl et al. 2006), at least regarding the short period domain (Neves et al. 2013).”
• A Decreased Probability of Habitable Planet Formation around Low-Mass Stars (2007, unknown): “A system of three planets with minimum masses between 5 and 15 M⊕ was recently discovered orbiting the 0.31 M⊙ star Gliese 581 (Bonfils et al. 2005; Udry et al. 2007).”
• THE LICK–CARNEGIE EXOPLANET SURVEY: A 3.1 M⊕ PLANET IN THE HABITABLE ZONE OF THE NEARBY M3V STAR GLIESE 581 (2010, background): “One of these targets, the nearby M3V star GJ 581 (HIP 74995), has received considerable attention in recent years following the announcement by Bonfils et al. (2005), hereafter Bonfils05, of a 5.37-day hot-Neptune (GJ 581b, or simply planet-b) around this star.”
• 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): “…HARPS succeeds in the discovery of several Neptune-mass and Super-Earth exoplanets around solar-type stars (Santos et al. 2004, Udry et al. 2006, Lovis et al. 2006, Melo et al. 2008, Mayor et al. 2008) and M dwarfs (Bonfils et al 2005, Udry et al. 2007a, Bonfils et al. 2007, Forveille et al. 2008).”
• Extrasolar planet population synthesis - II. Statistical comparison with observations (2009, background): “Ongoing dedicated M dwarf surveys e.g. with HARPS (Bonfils et al. 2005) will help to constrain this issue further from an observational point of view.”
• METALLICITY AND TEMPERATURE INDICATORS IN M DWARF K-BAND SPECTRA: TESTING NEW AND UPDATED CALIBRATIONS WITH OBSERVATIONS OF 133 SOLAR NEIGHBORHOOD M DWARFS (2011, background): “…and host-star metallicity is well established for FGK-dwarfs (Gonzalez 1997; Santos et al. 2004; Valenti & Fischer 2005), but the first investigations to examine if the planet-metallicity correlation extended to M dwarf hosts returned mixed results (Bonfils et al. 2005a; Bean et al. 2006b).”
• Spectroscopic parameters for 451 stars in the HARPS GTO planet search program - Stellar [Fe/H] and the frequency of exo-Neptunes (2008, background): “The offset on the metal distribution is small (∼0.07 dex), and possibly within the margins of errors (Bonfils et al. 2005a).”
• Habitable planets around the star Gliese 581 (2007, methodology): “The M-type star Gl 581 hosts at least 3 planets, which were detected using radial velocity measurements by Bonfils et al. (2005) (planet ’b’) and Udry et al. (2007) (planets ‘c’ and ‘d’).”
• 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, methodology): “The K-band mass-luminosity relation of Delfosse et al. (2000) gives a 0.35 M mass and the Bonfils et al. (2005a) photometric calibration of the metallicity results in [Fe/H] = −0.28 ± 0.2.”
• Extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs around A-F type stars. VI. High precision RV survey of early type dwarfs with HARPS (2008, unknown): “The search for planets around M stars seems sofar to confirm the previously mentionned expectations from theoretical works (see e.g., Bonfils et al. 2005; Butler et al. 2006).”
• The Habitability of Planets Orbiting M-dwarf Stars (2016, methodology): “As radial velocity sensitivity to M dwarfs improved, both with use of larger telescopes (Butler et al., 2004; Bonfils et al., 2005), infrared spectroscopy (Bean et al., 2009), and longer time baselines, their population of smaller planets came into focus.”
• Planets around evolved intermediate-mass stars - I. Two substellar companions in the open clusters NGC 2423 and NGC 4349 (2007, result): “This is also supported by observational data showing that giant planets are much rarer around M dwarfs than around solar-type stars (Bonfils et al. 2005; Endl et al. 2006; Butler et al. 2006).”