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More interesting planets

By catdynamics on July 6, 2007.

High mass planets around metal poor red dwarfs, may put small crack in big theory

New planets just put up on exoplanet.eu - from JJ of the California-Carnegie-AAT group. These were mentioned at Santorini, but I don't think I talked specifically about them at the time, not sure if I failed to note the detailed parameters or because they were just "talked about" rather than formally announced. Outer planet solution does not seem to have fully converged yet, but if I recall the discussion something about a Jupiter mass must be out there - it may move a little bit as more data comes in.

GJ317b and GJ371c

M3 red dwarf main eequence star (about 1/4 solar mass) about 10pc away.
Slightly sub-solar metallicty (-0.23).

Masses are 1.2 and 0.8 M_J/sin(i) - and orbital periods are 673 and 2700 days, with eccentricities of ~ 0.2 and 0.4 respectively. Parameters for outer planet are tentative, obviously.

Hm. Bit of a theory buster - high mass planets in wide orbits around a low mass metal poor star...
modulo selections effects, this is hard to arrange.
A few more like this and we'll need to revisit some details in the assumptions of the theory. Again.

Tags
astro

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