| Issue |
A&A
Volume 605, September 2017
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | L11 | |
| Number of page(s) | 7 | |
| Section | Letters | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201731581 | |
| Published online | 22 September 2017 | |
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets
XLII. A system of Earth-mass planets around the nearby M dwarf YZ Ceti⋆,⋆⋆
1 Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, 51 Ch. des Maillettes, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
e-mail: nicola.astudillo@unige.ch
2 Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, C1428 EGA Buenos Aires, Argentina
3 CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio (IAFE), 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina
4 Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France
5 Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, CAUP, Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto, Portugal
6 Departamento de Física e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, 4099. 002 Porto, Portugal
7 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Received: 17 July 2017
Accepted: 26 August 2017
Exoplanet surveys have shown that systems with multiple low-mass planets on compact orbits are common. Except for a few cases, however, the masses of these planets are generally unknown. At the very end of the main sequence, host stars have the lowest mass and hence offer the largest reflect motion for a given planet. In this context, we monitored the low-mass (0.13 M⊙) M dwarf YZ Cet (GJ 54.1, HIP 5643) intensively and obtained radial velocities and stellar-activity indicators derived from spectroscopy and photometry, respectively. We find strong evidence that it is orbited by at least three planets in compact orbits (POrb = 1.97, 3.06, 4.66 days), with the inner two near a 2:3 mean-motion resonance. The minimum masses are comparable to the mass of Earth (M sin i = 0.75 ± 0.13, 0.98 ± 0.14, and 1.14 ± 0.17 M⊕), and they are also the lowest masses measured by radial velocity so far. We note the possibility for a fourth planet with an even lower mass of M sin i = 0.472 ± 0.096 M⊕ at POrb = 1.04 days. An n-body dynamical model is used to place further constraints on the system parameters. At 3.6 parsecs, YZ Cet is the nearest multi-planet system detected to date.
Key words: stars: individual: YZ Cet / planetary systems / stars: late-type / techniques: radial velocities
Based on observations made with the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6 m telescope under the program IDs 180.C-0886(A), 183.C-0437(A), and 191.C-0873(A) at Cerro La Silla (Chile).
Radial velocity data (Table B.4) are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/605/L11
© ESO, 2017
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.