Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Measuring the obliquity distribution of stars hosting warm Jupiters may help us to understand the formation of close-orbiting gas giants. Few such measurements have been performed due to practical difficulties in scheduling observations of the relatively infrequent and long-duration transits of warm Jupiters. Here, we report a measurement of the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect for K2-232 b, a warm Jupiter on an 11.17 day orbit with an eccentricity of 0.26. The data were obtained with the Automated Planet Finder during two separate transits. The planet’s orbit appears to be well aligned with the spin axis of the host star, with a projected spin–orbit angle of λ = −11.°1 ± 6.°6. Combined with the other available data, we find that high obliquities are almost exclusively associated with planets that either have an orbital separation greater than 10 stellar radii or orbit stars with effective temperatures hotter than 6000 K. This pattern suggests that the obliquities of the closest-orbiting giant planets around cooler stars have been damped by tidal effects.
Source: The Astronomical Journal
Authors: Songhu Wang, Joshua N. Winn, Brett C. Addison, Fei Dai, Malena Rice, Bradford Holden, Jennifer A. Burt, Xian-Yu Wang, R. Paul Butler, Steven S. Vogt, Gregory Laughlin
Institutions: Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana University, Princeton University, University of Southern Queensland, Yale University, University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California Observatories, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Astronomical Observatories, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Carnegie Institution for Science, Earth and Planets Laboratory
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3165858264