Tag Archives: K2

Nature Research Highlight on WASP-104b

Our recent paper on WASP-104b has been picked up as a Research Highlight by Nature. We reproduce it here:

The Kepler space telescope, shown here in an artist’s rendering, helped detect a carbon-black planet. Credit: NASA

“Astronomers led by Teo Močnik at Keele University, UK, used NASA’s Kepler telescope to study a star called WASP-104, which lies roughly 144 parsecs from Earth in the constellation Leo. Earlier observations had documented a dimming of WASP-104’s light every 1.76 days, indicating that a planet was regularly crossing the star’s face. But Močnik’s team could not detect starlight reflecting off the planet, as scientists usually expect after discovering a new world. That led the researchers to conclude that the planet is nearly pure black in colour. The planet’s darkness could help scientists to test their ideas about exoplanetary atmospheres, such as how clouds might form on a world that reflects so little light.”

The paper, published in Astronomical Journal, is here.

WASP-104b is Darker than Charcoal

Hot Jupiter WASP-104b was observed in Campaign 14 of the Kepler K2 mission, leading to superb-quality photometry covering 45 orbital cycles of the planet.

Keele graduate student Teo Močnik has analysed the data and concluded that WASP-104b is one of the darkest exoplanets known, reflecting less than 3% of the light from its star.

The conclusion comes from interpreting the “phase curve” produced when the photometry is folded on the planet’s orbital period. Variations in the light are expected to come from the transit and occultation (when the planet passes in front of and behind the star, respectively), from the gravitational distortion of the host star caused by the close-in planet, and from the reflection of starlight.

The phase curve of WASP-104b, as observed by K2, fitted with a red-line model.

The low albedo of the planet is a surprise, but might indicate the absence of clouds (which can be highly reflective) or the presence of ions such as sodium and potassium that absorb light.

The story of WASP-104b was reported by New Scientist, and that then led to articles in Science Alert, Metro, the Daily Mail, Newsweek, the International Business Times, Tech Times and other locations.

Precise masses for the WASP-47 exoplanetary system

In the discovery paper the exoplanet WASP-47b was introduced to the world with the description: “With an orbital period of 4.16 d, a mass of 1.14 M_Jup and a radius of 1.15 R_Jup, WASP-47b is an entirely typical hot Jupiter”.

And it did appear to be entirely typical until Juliette Becker et al looked at K2 lightcurves and found two more planets, a super-Earth orbiting inside the hot Jupiter (WASP-47e in a 0.79-d orbit) and a Neptune orbiting just outside it (WASP-47d in a 9-d orbit). Around the same time Neveu-VanMalle et al announced long-term monitoring showing another Jupiter-mass planet (WASP-47c), this one in a much wider orbit of 580 days. Thus WASP-47 was shown to host a whole exoplanetary system, one that is so-far unique.

Since then WASP-47 has been observed intensively in order to measure the planet masses and investigate the dynamics of the exoplanetary system. The state of play is now reported by Andrew Vanderburg et al. The planets’ host star is tugged around by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planets, leading to the following cyclical variations in the observed radial velocities:

Combining all the information, Vanderburg et al deduce that the innermost “super-Earth”, WASP-47e, is not dense enough to be made only of rock. Instead it likely has a liquid or gaseous envelope (possibly water or steam) surrounding an Earth-like core. That is unlike other ultra-short-period super-Earths which appear to be fully rocky.

From modelling the dynamical history of the system Vanderburg et al also deduce that the outermost planet, WASP-47c, is likely in an orbit that is in the same plane as those of the inner planets. If this were not the case then the system would not be stable. Thus they conclude that the likelihood that WASP-47c also transits its star, as seen from Earth, is relatively high, which should motivate a campaign to look for those transits.

Super-Neptune WASP-107b has an oblique orbit

WASP-107b is only twice the mass of Neptune but nearly the radius of Jupiter. It is thus a hugely bloated and fluffy exoplanet and one of the more important of the recent WASP discoveries, being a prime target for atmospheric characterisation (see the discovery paper by Anderson et al 2017).

WASP-107b was also in the Campaign-10 field of the K2 mission, leading to a Kepler-quality photometric lightcurve. Recent papers by two teams, led by Teo Močnik and Fei Dai, have arrived at a similar conclusion: WASP-107b seems to be in an oblique orbit, rather than in an orbit aligned with the rotation axis of the host star.

spot_tran

The conclusion comes from star spots. If the orbit is aligned, consecutive transits will repeatedly cross the same star spot, producing a “bump” in the lightcurve each time, whereas if the orbit is oblique this will not happen.

Thus one can play the game of looking for transit bumps and seeing if they repeat. But spots can change, by growing or shrinking, so is a smaller bump in the next transit the same spot, or a different one? Also, if there is some uncertainty in the rotational period of the star, then we’re not fully sure exactly where in the next transit the spot will recur.

Star spots in transits of exoplanet WASP-107b

In the figure at left (in which the transit itself, between the dashed lines, has been removed, leaving only the starspot bumps), obvious spots are circled in red, while possible spots are marked with a lighter red. The rotational period of the star is nearly three times the orbital period of the planet, and so, if the spots recurred, they would be seen every three transits. (The gap, and thus the missing of transits 3, 4 and 5, arose from a spacecraft malfunction.)

The conclusion is that the star spots do not seem to recur and thus that WASP-107b is in an oblique orbit.

WASP-118 is pulsating

The K2 spacecraft is monitoring a series of fields along the ecliptic and so producing Kepler-quality photometry on some of the exoplanet systems previously discovered by WASP.

WASP-118b is an inflated hot-Jupiter planet (0.5 Jupiter masses but 1.4 Jupiter radii) on a 4-day orbit around a bright F-type star of V = 11. It was observed for 75 days in K2‘s Campaign 8. Teo Močnik et al have now analysed the data and see transits of the planet, as expected:

WASP-118 transits as observed with K2

The upper black curve is the raw data, while the lower red curve has been corrected for artefacts caused by drifts in K2‘s pointing. Nineteen transits are seen, recurring with the 4-day orbital period.

But Teo Močnik noticed that the out-of-transit photometry was not as flat as expected. After further investigation he deduced that the host star is pulsating:

WASP-118 is a pulsating star

The pulsations have a timescale of 1.9 days and a very low amplitude of 2 parts in 10 000, only discernable given a lightcurve with Kepler‘s photometric accuracy. Thus WASP-118 appears to be a γ-Doradus pulsator, possibly the first γ-Dor variable known to host a transiting exoplanet.

Long-lasting starspots on exoplanet-host Qatar-2

Planets transiting their star can cross a starspot, and that — since the spot is dimmer than its surrounding — causes an upward blip in the light-curve of the transit. The same starspot can be occulted in consecutive transits, and so is seen later in phase each time because the star has rotated between the transits.

An illustration of a starspot feature in consecutive transits. Image by Klaus Felix Huber.

A starspot feature in three consecutive transits. Image by Klaus Felix Huber.

Keele University PhD student Teo Močnik has looked at the Kepler K2 lightcurve of Qatar-2, a star known to host a hot Jupiter in a 1.34-day orbit. The lightcurve records 59 consecutive transits over a 79-day period and Močnik finds that most of the observed transits are affected by starspots (link to paper).

In the plot below each numbered lightcurve is from a transit, which occurs between the vertical dashed lines. The transit profile itself, however, has been subtracted in order to better show the starspot features.

The starspots occur in groups, shown by red ellipses, and each group is the same starspot being seen in consecutive transits. Interestingly, though, the groups of spots themselves recur. Thus the starspots are lasting long enough that they pass behind the limb of the star, and then re-appear to be transited again one stellar rotation cycle later!

One particular starspot first causes the features in transits 20 to 22, then comes round again to produce the features in transits 33 to 36, and then comes round once again to produce the features in transits 46 to 50. Thus the starspot must have lasted for at least 40 days.

We thus have one of the best observations yet of a starspot on a star other than our sun. From this information we can calculate the rotation period of the star, place limits on the size, position and longevity of the spots, and also show that the planet’s orbit is closely aligned with the spin axis of the star.

Starspots on WASP-85 from K2 transits

If, during a transit of its star, an exoplanet crosses a star spot, it will be covering a region that is dimmer than the rest of the star. Since less light will be being occulted, we will see a small increase or “bump” in the transit profile. WASP-85 was recently observed by the K2 mission, getting sufficiently high-quality photometry that it could reveal such starspot `bumps”.

Here is the transit proflle, from a paper by Teo Močnik et al, which contains all the K2 data folded in:

Teo Močnik then subtracted the overall transit profile, thus showing the departures from the average behaviour, and produced a plot of each transit:

The vertical dashed lines show the regions in transit. The lightcurve bumps circled in red are starspots being occulted. (Blue arrows are times when K2 fired its thrusters, which can cause a feature in the lightcurve.)

The interesting question is whether a bump recurs in the next transit, but shifted later in phase, as it would if the same starspot is being occulted again. This would happen if the planet’s orbit is aligned with the stellar rotation. In that case, as the star rotates, the spot moves along the line of transit, to be occulted again next transit.

An illustration of a planet occulting a star spot when the planet’s orbit and the star’s rotation are aligned. Graphic by Cristina Sanchis Ojeda

To judge whether the starspot bumps repeat, Teo gave all the co-authors a set of lightcurves and asked them to judge which features in the lightcurve were genuine bumps. But, to avoid human bias, he first scrambled the order of the lightcurves, so that the co-authors didn’t know which lightcurve came next.

The result is that we think that starspots do repeat, shown by the red linking lines in the above figure. This shows that the planet’s orbit is aligned, and it also allows us to estimate the rotational period of the star.

WASP-157b, a transiting Hot Jupiter observed with K2

Hot on to arXiv is our latest discovery paper. WASP-157b marks a jump upwards in WASP numbering, since we’ve somewhat rushed this one out. WASP-157 was flagged as a WASP candidate in 2014 and added to our program for radial-velocity (RV) and photometric follow-up. Meanwhile, being in the field of K2 Campaign 6, it was observed by Kepler from July to September 2015. Since K2 data are public, this meant that other groups would soon be on its trail.

A TRAPPIST observation of the transit, shortly before the K2 data were due to be released, along with prioritising it for CORALIE and HARPS RVs, rapidly accumulated enough observations to prove it was a planet. Keele student Teo Močnik then did a good job of analysing the K2 data and turning all the observations into a paper. A gap of only four days between the last CORALIE radial-velocity observation and the paper appearing on arXiv is efficient work!

Here is the K2 lightcurve showing the transits of WASP-157b:

Masses for WASP-47’s planets

Since the discovery by K2 of two more transiting exoplanets orbiting WASP-47, plus a fourth planet at a much longer orbital period, this system has shot to the top of the priority lists. A team led by Fei Dai of MIT have thus pointed the 6.5-m Magellan/Clay telescope at WASP-47 to try to measure the radial-velocity signal, and hence the masses, of the two planets found by K2.

The figure shows the complex radial-velocity motion in a multiple-planet system. The blue curve is the radial-velocity motion caused by the 4.2-day-period hot-Jupiter WASP-47b, as originally found by the WASP project. The yellow curve is caused by the 0.79-day planet WASP-47e, the green curve by the 9-day planet WASP-47d, and the purple by the much-longer-period WASP-47c. The red line is then the sum of all the planets and the black dots are the measurements by Dai et al.

By fitting all of the data, Dai et al show that the innermost planet, WASP-47e, has a mass of 12 +/- 4 Earths, while the 9-day planet WASP-47c has a mass of 10 +/- 8 Earths. Both results are in line with previous mass estimates from transit-timing variations, which helps to validate mass measurements by both the RV and the TTV techniques.

Four planets around WASP-47!

As NASA’s Kepler mission covers fields in the ecliptic previously surveyed by WASP, it is obtaining photometry of unprecedented quality on some WASP planets. The big news this week is the discovery of two more transiting planets in the WASP-47 system.

WASP-47 had seemed to be a relatively routine hot-Jupiter system with the discovery of a Jupiter-sized planet in a 4-day orbit, reported in a batch of transiting planets from WASP-South by Hellier et al 2012.

But WASP-47 is anything but routine. Now Becker et al have announced that the Kepler K2 lightcurves show two more transiting planets: a super-Earth planet in an orbit of only 0.79 days, and a Neptune-sized planet in an orbit of 9.0 days. Being much smaller, these planets cause transits that are too shallow to have been seen in the original WASP data.

The super-Earth, labelled WASP-47c, has a radius of 1.8 Earths while the Neptune, labelled WASP-47d, has a radius of 3.6 Earths. The triple-planet system is dynamically stable, but the gravitational interaction causes perturbations in the orbits, leading to variations in the times of the transits.

Such “transit-timing variations” or TTVs lead to estimates of the planetary masses. Becker et al find that the hot Jupiter has a mass of 340 Earths (consistent with the mass of 360 Earths originally reported by Hellier et al from radial-velocity measurements), while the Neptune has a mass of 9 Earths. The super-Earth must be less massive than that, but current timing measurements are not sensitive enough to say more.

As if three planets were not enough, there is a probable fourth planet orbiting WASP-47. The Geneva Observatory group routinely monitor known WASP systems, taking radial-velocity measurements over years, to look for longer-period planets. Marion Neveu-VanMalle and colleagues have recently reported the detection of another Jupiter-mass planet orbiting WASP-47, this time in a much wider orbit of 571 days.

The WASP-47 system has now become hugely interesting for understanding exoplanets, and will trigger many additional observations of the system. For example, being bright enough to allow good radial-velocity data, it will provide a much-needed check that the mass estimates from TTVs match those from the more traditional radial-velocity technique.

The system will also be of strong interest to theorists, who will want to understand the formation and origin of a planetary system with this architecture. One immediate consequence is that it shows that a hot Jupiter can arise by inward migration through the proto-planetary disk, without destroying all other planets in its path.

WASP Planets

Transiting exoplanets from the Wide Angle Search for Planets