A cold Neptune-mass planet OGLE-2007-BLG-368Lb: cold Neptunes are common

Sumi, T.; Bennett, D. P.; Bond, I. A.; Udalski, A.; Batista, V.; Dominik, M.; Fouqué, P.; Kubas, D.; Gould, A.; Macintosh, B.; Cook, K.; Dong, S.; Skuljan, L.; Cassan, A.; Abe, F.; Botzler, C. S.; Fukui, A.; Furusawa, K.; Hearnshaw, J. B.; Itow, Y.; Kamiya, K.; Kilmartin, P. M.; Korpela, A.; Lin, W.; Ling, C. H.; Masuda, K.; Matsubara, Y.; Miyake, N.; Muraki, Y.; Nagaya, M.; Nagayama, T.; Ohnishi, K.; Okumura, T.; Perrott, Y. C.; Rattenbury, N.; Saito, To.; Sako, T.; Sullivan, D. J.; Sweatman, W. L.; Tristram, P. J.; Yock, P. C. M.; Beaulieu, J. P.; Cole, A.; Coutures, Ch.; Duran, M. F.; Greenhill, J.; Jablonski, F.; Marboeuf, U.; Martioli, E.; Pedretti, E.; Pejcha, O.; Rojo, P.; Albrow, M. D.; Brillant, S.; Bode, M.; Bramich, D. M.; Burgdorf, M. J.; Caldwell, J. A. R.; Calitz, H.; Corrales, E.; Dieters, S.; Dominis Prester, D.; Donatowicz, J.; Hill, K.; Hoffman, M.; Horne, K.; Jørgensen, U. G.; Kains, N.; Kane, S.; Marquette, J. B.; Martin, R.; Meintjes, P.; Menzies, J.; Pollard, K. R.; Sahu, K. C.; Snodgrass, C.; Steele, I.; Street, R.; Tsapras, Y.; Wambsganss, J.; Williams, A.; Zub, M.; Szymański, M. K.; Kubiak, M.; Pietrzyński, G.; Soszyński, I.; Szewczyk, O.; Wyrzykowski, Ł; Ulaczyk, K.; Allen, W.; Christie, G. W.; DePoy, D. L.; Gaudi, B. S.; Han, C.; Janczak, J.; Lee, C.-U.; McCormick, J.; Mallia, F.; Monard, B.; Natusch, T.; Park, B.-G.; Pogge, R. W. and Santallo, R. (2010). A cold Neptune-mass planet OGLE-2007-BLG-368Lb: cold Neptunes are common. Astrophysical Journal, 710(2) pp. 1641–1653.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/710/2/1641

Abstract

We present the discovery of a Neptune-mass planet OGLE-2007-BLG-368Lb with a planet-star mass ratio of q = [9.5 ± 2.1] × 10^–5 via gravitational microlensing. The planetary deviation was detected in real-time thanks to the high cadence of the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics survey, real-time light-curve monitoring and intensive follow-up observations. A Bayesian analysis returns the stellar mass and distance at M_l = 0.64^+0.21_–0.26 M_☉ and D_l = 5.9^+0.9_–1.4 kpc, respectively, so the mass and separation of the planet are M_p = 20⁺⁷_–8 M_⊕ and a = 3.3^+1.4_–0.8 AU, respectively. This discovery adds another cold Neptune-mass planet to the planetary sample discovered by microlensing, which now comprises four cold Neptune/super-Earths, five gas giant planets, and another sub-Saturn mass planet whose nature is unclear. The discovery of these 10 cold exoplanets by the microlensing method implies that the mass ratio function of cold exoplanets scales as dN_pl/d log q α q ^–0.7±0.2 with a 95% confidence level upper limit of n < –0.35 (where dN_pl/d log q α qⁿ ). As microlensing is most sensitive to planets beyond the snow-line, this implies that Neptune-mass planets are at least three times more common than Jupiters in this region at the 95% confidence level.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI