Browsing by Subject "planets and satellites: Formation"

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    An Alma Disk Mass for the Candidate Protoplanetary Companion to FW Tau
    (2015-01) Kraus, Adam L.; Andrews, Sean M.; Bowler, Brendan P.; Herczeg, Gregory; Ireland, Michael J.; Liu, Michael C.; Metchev, Stanimir; Cruz, Kelle L.; Kraus, Adam L.
    We present ALMA observations of the FW Tau system, a close binary pair of M5 stars with a wide-orbit (300 AU projected separation) substellar companion. The companion is extremely faint and red in the optical and near-infrared, but boasts a weak far-infrared excess and optical/near-infrared emission lines indicative of a primordial accretion disk of gas and dust. The component-resolved 1.3mm continuum emission is found to be associated only with the companion, with a flux (1.78 +/- 0.03 mJy) that indicates a dust mass of 1-2M(circle plus). While this mass reservoir is insufficient to form a giant planet, it is more than sufficient to produce an analog of the Kepler-42 exoplanetary system or the Galilean satellites. The mass and geometry of the disk-bearing FW Tau companion remains unclear. Near-infrared spectroscopy shows deep water bands that indicate a spectral type later than M5, but substantial veiling prevents a more accurate determination of the effective temperature (and hence mass). Both a disk-bearing "planetary-mass" companion seen in direct light or a brown dwarf tertiary viewed in light scattered by an edge-on disk or envelope remain possibilities.
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    Spin-Orbit Alignment for the Circumbinary Planet Host Kepler-16 A
    (2011-11) Winn, Joshua N.; Albrecht, Simon; Johnson, John Asher; Torres, Guillermo; Cochran, William D.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Howard, Andrew W.; Isaacson, Howard; Fischer, Debra; Doyle, Laurance; Welsh, William; Carter, Joshua A.; Fabrycky, Daniel C.; Ragozzine, Darin; Quinn, Samuel N.; Shporer, Avi; Howell, Steve B.; Latham, David W.; Orosz, Jerome; Prsa, Andrej; Slawson, Robert W.; Borucki, William J.; Koch, David; Barclay, Thomas; Boss, Alan P.; Christensen-Dalsgaard, Jorgen; Girouard, Forrest R.; Jenkins, Jon; Klaus, Todd C.; Meibom, Soren; Morris, Robert L.; Sasselov, Dimitar; Still, Martin; Van Cleve, Jeffrey; Cochran, William D.
    Kepler-16 is an eccentric low-mass eclipsing binary with a circumbinary transiting planet. Here, we investigate the angular momentum of the primary star, based on Kepler photometry and Keck spectroscopy. The primary star's rotation period is 35.1 +/- 1.0 days, and its projected obliquity with respect to the stellar binary orbit is 1.degrees 6 +/- 2.degrees 4. Therefore, the three largest sources of angular momentum-the stellar orbit, the planetary orbit, and the primary's rotation-are all closely aligned. This finding supports a Formation scenario involving accretion from a single disk. Alternatively, tides may have realigned the stars despite their relatively wide separation (0.2 AU), a hypothesis that is supported by the agreement between the measured rotation period and the "pseudosynchronous" period of tidal evolution theory. The rotation period, chromospheric activity level, and fractional light variations suggest a main-sequence age of 2-4 Gyr. Evolutionary models of low-mass stars can match the observed masses and radii of the primary and secondary stars to within about 3%.