The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XI. Super-Earths (5 and 8 M{⊕}) in a 3-planet system

By S. Udry, X. Bonfils, X. Delfosse, T. Forveille, M. Mayor, C. Perrier, F. Bouchy, C. Lovis, F. Pepe, D. Queloz and 12 more. 2007

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This Letter reports on the detection of two super-Earth planets in the Gl 581 system, which is already known to harbour a hot Neptune. One of the planets has a mass of 5 M⊕ and resides at the “warm” edge of the habitable zone of the star. It is thus the known exoplanet that most resembles our own Earth. The other planet has a 7.7 M⊕ mass and orbits at 0.25 AU from the star, close to the “cold” edge of the habitable zone. These two new light planets around an M3 dwarf further confirm the formerly tentative statistical trend toward (i) many more very low-mass planets being found around M dwarfs than around solar-type stars and (ii) low-mass planets outnumbering Jovian planets around M dwarfs. Based on observations made with the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6 m telescope at La Silla Observatory under the GTO programme ID 072.C-0488. Table of radial velocities is only available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/469/L43

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e137242befa75177ba1a65ff5c1cdbb4f3459b1f

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Citations in the corpus

HABITABLE ZONES AROUND MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS: DEPENDENCE ON PLANETARY MASS (2014, background): “Recent observational surveys have discovered several potential habitable zone (HZ) planet candidates (Udry et al. 2007; Vogt et al. 2010; Pepe et al. 2011a; Borucki et al. 2011; Bonfils et al. 2011; Borucki et al. 2012; Vogt et al. 2012; ?”
HAT-P-11b: A SUPER-NEPTUNE PLANET TRANSITING A BRIGHT K STAR IN THE KEPLER FIELD (2009, background): “Udry et al. (2007) found a 5M⊕ and an 8M⊕ mass planet in a triple planetary system around GJ 581.”
Debris disks as signposts of terrestrial planet formation (2011, background): “Hundreds of close-in planets – the outcome of planet formation – have been detected by radial velocity and transit observations, with masses down to a few M⊕ (e.g., Butler et al. 2006; Udry et al. 2007; Léger et al. 2009; Batalha et al. 2011).”
Inevitability of Plate Tectonics on Super-Earths (2007, background): “However, five super-Earth planets (a class defined as having a mass between 1-10 M⊕- earth-masses) have been detected in the last few years (Rivera et al. 2005; Beaulieau et al. 2006; Lovis et al. 2006; Udry et al. 2007).”
THE NIRSPEC ULTRACOOL DWARF RADIAL VELOCITY SURVEY (2010, methodology): “For bright early-M dwarfs both the thorium–argon (ThAr) emission lamps and simultaneous iodine (I2) absorption cells have been used to obtain RV precision of 3–5 m s−1 (Endl et al. 2006; Johnson et al. 2007; Udry et al. 2007; Zechmeister et al. 2009).”
PHOTOCHEMISTRY IN TERRESTRIAL EXOPLANET ATMOSPHERES. I. PHOTOCHEMISTRY MODEL AND BENCHMARK CASES (2012, background): “A large number of super Earths are being detected (e.g., Rivera et al. 2005; Udry et al. 2007; Forveille et al. 2009; Léger et al. 2009; Charbonneau et al. 2009; Mayor et al. 2009; Vogt et al. 2010; Rivera et al. 2010; Dawson & Fabrycky 2010; Holman et al. 2010; Howard et al. 2011; Bonfils et al.…”
Planetary detection limits taking into account stellar noise - I. Observational strategies to reduce stellar oscillation and granulation effects (2010, background): “However, since approximately 5 years, planets from 2 to 10 M⊕, have been detected (e.g. Mayor et al. 2009b,a; Udry et al. 2007).”
Potential Biosignatures in Super-Earth Atmospheres (2010, background): “Two systems (around Gliese 581 and HD 40307) host three potential low-mass planets each (Udry et al. 2007, Mayor et al. 2009b, Mayor et al. 2009a).”
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): “HARPS also revealed to us the system Gl 581, with two possibly rocky planets c and d with masses of 5 and 8 MEarth, respectively, both lying at the edge of the habitable zone (HZ) of their parent star (Udry et al. 2007; Selsis et al. 2007), and the Gl 581 e of only 1.9 M⊕ (Mayor et al. 2009a).”
Design Considerations for a Ground-Based Transit Search for Habitable Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs (2007, background): “Firstly, the growing number of M-dwarf exoplanet discoveries, including the ∼5:5 M⊕ planet orbiting Gliese 581c (Udry et al. 2007) and the microlensing discovery OGLE 2005-BLG-390Lb (Beaulieu et al. 2006), suggest an abundance of sub-Neptune mass planets orbiting M dwarfs.”
GLIESE 581D IS THE FIRST DISCOVERED TERRESTRIAL-MASS EXOPLANET IN THE HABITABLE ZONE (2011, background): “GJ581d, in constrast, which was first discovered in 2007 and has a minimum mass between 5.6 and 7.1 MEarth, has now been robustly confirmed by radial velocity (RV) observations (Udry et al. 2007; Mayor et al. 2009; Vogt et al. 2010).”
PLANETS AROUND LOW-MASS STARS (PALMS). IV. THE OUTER ARCHITECTURE OF M DWARF PLANETARY SYSTEMS (2014, background): “…hand, recent radial velocity and transit surveys are showing that Earth- to Neptune-sized planets not only exist in this stellar mass regime (e.g., Udry et al. 2007; Mayor et al. 2009; Charbonneau et al. 2009; Muirhead et al. 2012) but appear to be quite common (Bonfils et al. 2013; Berta et al.…”
Spectroscopic parameters for 451 stars in the HARPS GTO planet search program - Stellar [Fe/H] and the frequency of exo-Neptunes (2008, background): “…orbiting a solar-like star (Mayor & Queloz 1995), including several planets in the Neptune-mass regime (e.g. McArthur et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2004b; Butler et al. 2004; Vogt et al. 2005; Rivera et al. 2005; Bonfils et al. 2005a, 2007; Udry et al. 2006, 2007; Lovis et al. 2006; Melo et al. 2007).”
RADIAL VELOCITY PLANETS DE-ALIASED: A NEW, SHORT PERIOD FOR SUPER-EARTH 55 Cnc e (2010, methodology): “However, using the previous data set from Udry et al. (2007), we favor (in order): 0.0122 day−1, 0.0150 day−1, and 0.9877 day−1.”
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): “…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; Bonfils et al. 2007, Forveille et al. 2009).”