Kepler-1647B: the Largest and Longest-Period Kepler Transiting Circumbinary Planet

Authors

Veselin B. Kostov, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Jerome A. Orosz, San Diego State University
William F. Welsh, San Diego State University
Laurance R. Doyle, SETI Institute
Daniel C. Fabrycky, University of Chicago
Nader Haghighipour, University of Hawaii-Manoa
Billy Quarles, The University of Nebraska at KearneyFollow
Donald R. Short, San Diego State University
William D. Cochran, The University of Texas as Austin
Michael Endl, The University of Texas as Austin
Eric B. Ford, The Pennsylvania State University
Joao Gregorio, Atalaia Group and Crow-Observatory
Tobias C. Hinse, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
Howard Isaacson, University of California Berkeley
Jon M. Jenkins, NASA Ames Research Center
Eric L.N Jensen, Swarthmore College
Ilya Kull, Tel Aviv University
David W. Latham, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Jack J. Lissauer, Swarthmore College
Geoffrey W. Marcy, University of California Berkeley
Tsevi Mazeh, Tel Aviv University
Tobias W.A Müller, University of TuebingenFollow
Joshua Pepper, Lehigh University
Samuel N. Quinn, Georgia State University
Darin Ragozzine, Florida Institute of TechnologyFollow
Avi Shporer, California Institute of Technology
Jason H. Steffen, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Guillermo Torres, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsFollow
Gur Windmiller, San Diego State University
William J. Borucki, NASA Ames Research Center
Stephen Kane, Swarthmore College

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2015

Publication Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Volume

827

Issue

1

First page number:

1

Last page number:

61

Abstract

We report the discovery of a new Kepler transiting circumbinary planet (CBP). This latest addition to the still-small family of CBPs defies the current trend of known short-period planets orbiting near the stability limit of binary stars. Unlike the previous discoveries, the planet revolving around the eclipsing binary system Kepler-1647 has a very long orbital period (~1100 days) and was at conjunction only twice during the Kepler mission lifetime. Due to the singular configuration of the system, Kepler-1647b is not only the longest-period transiting CBP at the time of writing, but also one of the longest-period transiting planets. With a radius of 1.06+/-0.01 RJup it is also the largest CBP to date. The planet produced three transits in the light-curve of Kepler-1647 (one of them during an eclipse, creating a syzygy) and measurably perturbed the times of the stellar eclipses, allowing us to measure its mass to be 1.52+/-0.65 MJup. The planet revolves around an 11-day period eclipsing binary consisting of two Solar-mass stars on a slightly inclined, mildly eccentric (e_bin = 0.16), spin-synchronized orbit. Despite having an orbital period three times longer than Earth's, Kepler-1647b is in the conservative habitable zone of the binary star throughout its orbit.

Disciplines

Astrophysics and Astronomy

Repository Citation

Kostov, V. B., Orosz, J. A., Welsh, W. F., Doyle, L. R., Fabrycky, D. C., Haghighipour, N., Quarles, B., Short, D. R., Cochran, W. D., Endl, M., Ford, E. B., Gregorio, J., Hinse, T. C., Isaacson, H., Jenkins, J. M., Jensen, E. L., Kull, I., Latham, D. W., Lissauer, J. J., Marcy, G. W., Mazeh, T., Müller, T. W., Pepper, J., Quinn, S. N., Ragozzine, D., Shporer, A., Steffen, J. H., Torres, G., Windmiller, G., Borucki, W. J., Kane, S. (2015). Kepler-1647B: the Largest and Longest-Period Kepler Transiting Circumbinary Planet. The Astrophysical Journal, 827(1), 1-61.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/827/1/86