| Issue |
A&A
Volume 697, May 2025
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | L8 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Letters to the Editor | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202554427 | |
| Published online | 15 May 2025 | |
Letter to the Editor
The tidal heating of the exoplanet 55 Cnc e
The role of the orbital eccentricity
1
Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
2
Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental, Observatorio Astronómico, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina
⋆ Corresponding author: sylvio@iag.usp.br
Received:
8
March
2025
Accepted:
22
April
2025
Context. Observations with warm Spitzer and JWST have revealed a high and variable brightness in the planet 55 Cnc e.
Aims. Our aim is to make an inventory of the tidal effects on the rotational and orbital evolution of the planet 55 Cnc e enhanced by the nonzero orbital eccentricity.
Methods. The creep-tide theory is used in simulations and dynamical analyses that explore the difficult trapping of the planet’s rotation in a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance and the most probable synchronization of the rotation.
Results. The strong tidal dissipation of energy, enhanced by the nonzero orbital eccentricity, may explain the observed brightness anomalies. However, the strong dissipation should also circularize the orbit. The observed nonzero eccentricity, if true, would indicate that an unknown planet in a close orbital resonance with 55 Cnc e perturbing the motion of this planet should exist.
Key words: planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability / planets and satellites: individual: 55 Cnc e
© The Authors 2025
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
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.