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Register a new userThe Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect of the Transiting Exoplanet XO-4b
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We report photometric and radial velocity observations of the XO-4 transiting planetary system, conducted with the FLWO 1.2m telescope and the 8.2m Subaru Telescope. Based on the new light curves, the refined transit ephemeris of XO-4b is $P = 4.1250828 pm 0.0000040$ days and $T_c [BJD_TDB] = 2454485.93323 pm 0.00039$. We measured the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect of XO-4b and estimated the sky-projected angle between the stellar spin axis and the planetary orbital axis to be $lambda = -46.7^{circ} ^{+8.1^{circ}}_{-6.1^{circ}}$. This measurement of $lambda$ is less robust than in some other cases because the impact parameter of the transit is small, causing a strong degeneracy between $lambda$ and the projected stellar rotational velocity. Nevertheless, our finding of a spin-orbit misalignment suggests that the migration process for XO-4b involved few-body dynamics rather than interaction with a gaseous disk. In addition, our result conforms with the pattern reported by Winn et al. (2010, ApJL, 718, L145) that high obliquities are preferentially found for stars with effective temperatures hotter than 6250~K.
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We report the discovery and the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect of Kepler-8b, a transiting planet identified by the NASA Kepler Mission. Kepler photometry and Keck-HIRES radial velocities yield the radius and mass of the planet around this F8IV subgiant host star. The planet has a radius RP = 1.419 RJ and a mass, MP = 0.60 MJ, yielding a density of 0.26 g cm^-3, among the lowest density planets known. The orbital period is P = 3.523 days and orbital semima jor axis is 0.0483+0.0006/-0.0012 AU. The star has a large rotational v sin i of 10.5 +/- 0.7 km s^-1 and is relatively faint (V = 13.89 mag), both properties deleterious to precise Doppler measurements. The velocities are indeed noisy, with scatter of 30 m s^-1, but exhibit a period and phase consistent with the planet implied by the photometry. We securely detect the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, confirming the planets existence and establishing its orbit as prograde. We measure an inclination between the projected planetary orbital axis and the projected stellar rotation axis of lambda = -26.9 +/- 4.6 deg, indicating a moderate inclination of the planetary orbit. Rossiter-McLaughlin measurements of a large sample of transiting planets from Kepler will provide a statistically robust measure of the true distribution of spin-orbit orientations for hot jupiters in general.
We present an observation of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for the planetary system WASP-3. Radial velocity measurements were made during transit using the SOPHIE spectrograph at the 1.93m telescope at Haute-Provence Observatory. The shape of the effect shows that the sky-projected angle between the stellar rotation axis and planetary orbital axis (lambda) is small and consistent with zero within 2 sigma; lambda = 15 +10/-9 deg. WASP-3b joins the ~two-thirds of planets with measured spin-orbit angles that are well aligned and are thought to have undergone a dynamically-gentle migration process such as planet-disc interactions. We find a systematic effect which leads to an anomalously high determination of the projected stellar rotational velocity (vsini = 19.6 +2.2/-2.1 km/s) compared to the value found from spectroscopic line broadening (vsini = 13.4 +/- 1.5 km/s). This is thought to be caused by a discrepancy in the assumptions made in the extraction and modelling of the data. Using a model developed by Hirano et al. (2009) designed to address this issue, we find vsini to be consistent with the value obtained from spectroscopic broadening measurements (vsini = 15.7 +1.4/-1.3 km/s).
In general, in the studies of transit light-curves and the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM), the contribution of the planets gravitational microlensing is neglected. Theoretical studies, have, however shown that the planets microlensing can affect the transit light-curve and in some extreme cases cause the transit depth to vanish. In this letter, we present the results of our quantitative analysis of microlening on the RM effect. Results indicate that for massive planets in on long period orbits, the planets microlensing will have considerable contribution to the stars RV measurements. We present the details of our study, and discuss our analysis and results.
Due to stellar rotation, the observed radial velocity of a star varies during the transit of a planet across its surface, a phenomenon known as the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect. The amplitude of the RM effect is related to the radius of the planet which, because of differential absorption in the planetary atmosphere, depends on wavelength. Therefore, the wavelength-dependent RM effect can be used to probe the planetary atmosphere. We measure for the first time the RM effect of the Earth transiting the Sun using a lunar eclipse observed with the ESO HARPS spectrograph. We analyze the observed RM effect at different wavelengths to obtain the transmission spectrum of the Earths atmosphere after the correction of the solar limb-darkening and the convective blueshift. The ozone Chappuis band absorption as well as the Rayleigh scattering features are clearly detectable with this technique. Our observation demonstrates that the RM effect can be an effective technique for exoplanet atmosphere characterization. Its particular asset is that photometric reference stars are not required, circumventing the principal challenge for transmission spectroscopy studies of exoplanet atmospheres using large ground-based telescopes.
The Rossiter-McLaughlin (hereafter RM) effect is a key tool for measuring the projected spin-orbit angle between stellar spin axes and orbits of transiting planets. However, the measured radial velocity (RV) anomalies produced by this effect are not intrinsic and depend on both instrumental resolution and data reduction routines. Using inappropriate formulas to model the RM effect introduces biases, at least in the projected velocity Vsin(i) compared to the spectroscopic value. Currently, only the iodine cell technique has been modeled, which corresponds to observations done by, e.g., the HIRES spectrograph of the Keck telescope. In this paper, we provide a simple expression of the RM effect specially designed to model observations done by the Gaussian fit of a cross-correlation function (CCF) as in the routines performed by the HARPS team. We derived also a new analytical formulation of the RV anomaly associated to the iodine cell technique. For both formulas, we modeled the subplanet mean velocity v_p and dispersion beta_p accurately taking the rotational broadening on the subplanet profile into account. We compare our formulas adapted to the CCF technique with simulated data generated with the numerical software SOAP-T and find good agreement up to Vsin(i) < 20 km/s. In contrast, the analytical models simulating the two different observation techniques can disagree by about 10 sigma in Vsin(i) for large spin-orbit misalignments. It is thus important to apply the adapted model when fitting data.
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