Issue |
A&A
Volume 511, February 2010
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A3 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
Section | Planets and planetary systems | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/200913507 | |
Published online | 19 February 2010 |
The thermal emission of the young and massive planet CoRoT-2b at 4.5 and 8
m
,![[*]](/icons/foot_motif.png)
M. Gillon1,2 - A. A. Lanotte1 - T. Barman3 - N. Miller4 - B.-O. Demory2 - M. Deleuil5 - J. Montalbán1 - F. Bouchy6 - A. Collier Cameron7 - H. J. Deeg8 - J. J. Fortney4 - M. Fridlund9 - J. Harrington10 - P. Magain1 - C. Moutou5 - D. Queloz2 - H. Rauer11,12 - D. Rouan13 - J. Schneider14
1 - Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université
de Liège, Allée du 6 Août 17, Bat. B5C, 4000 Liège, Belgium
2 -
Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, 51 Chemin des Maillettes, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
3 -
Lowell Observatory, 1400 West Mars Hill Road, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA
4 -
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
5 -
LAM, UMR 6110 CNRS, 38 rue Frédéric Joliot-Curie, 13388 Marseille, France
6 -
Observatoire de Haute Provence, USR 2207 CNRS, OAMP, 04870 St-Michel l'Observatoire, France
7 -
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, North Haugh, Fife, KY16 9SS, UK
8 -
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C. Via Lactea S/N, 38200 La Laguna, Spain
9 -
Research and Scientific Support Department, European Space Agency, ESTEC, 220 Noordwijk, The Netherlands
10 -
Planetary Sciences Group, Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
11 -
Institut fuer Planetenforschung, DLR, Rutherford str. 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany
12 -
Zentrum fuer Astronomie und Astrophysik, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623 Berlin, Germany
13 -
LESIA, UMR 8109 CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, UVSQ, Université Paris-Diderot, 5 Place J. Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
14 -
LUTH, UMR 8102 CNRS, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, 5 Place J. Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
Received 20 October 2009 / Accepted 26 November 2009
Abstract
We report measurements of the thermal emission of the young and massive planet CoRoT-2b at 4.5 and 8 m with the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). Our measured occultation depths are
% at 4.5 and
%
at 8
m.
In addition to the CoRoT optical measurements, these planet/star flux
ratios indicate a poor heat distribution on the night side of the
planet and agree better with an atmosphere free of temperature
inversion layer. Still, such an inversion is not definitely ruled out
by the observations and a larger wavelength coverage is required to
remove the current ambiguity. Our global analysis of CoRoT, Spitzer, and ground-based data confirms the high mass and large size of the planet with slightly revised values (
MJ,
RJ).
We find a small but significant offset in the timing of the occultation
when compared to a purely circular orbital solution, leading to
where e is the orbital eccentricity and
is the argument of periastron. Constraining the age of the system to at
most a few hundred Myr and assuming that the non-zero orbital
eccentricity does not come from a third undetected body, we modeled the
coupled orbital-tidal evolution of the system with various tidal Q values, core sizes, and initial orbital parameters. For
,
our modeling is able to explain the large radius of CoRoT-2b if
through a transient tidal circularization and corresponding planet
tidal heating event. Under this model, the planet will reach its Roche
limit within 20 Myr at most.
Key words: binaries: eclipsing - planetary systems - stars: individual: CoRoT-2 - techniques: photometric
1 Introduction
Transiting planets are key objects for understanding the atmospheric properties of exoplanets. Indeed, their special geometrical configuration gives us the opportunity not only to deduce their density but also to study their atmospheres directly without the challenging need to spatially resolve their light from that of their host star. In particular, their emergent flux can be directly measured during their occultation (secondary eclipse) when they are hidden by their host star, as was demonstrated by Charbonneau et al. (2005) and Deming et al. (2005). Since 2005, many exoplanet occultation measurements have been gathered, the bulk of them by the Spitzer Space Telescope (see, e.g., Deming 2009), the few others by the Hubble Space Telescope (Swain et al. 2009), CoRoT (Alonso et al. 2009b,c; Snellen et al. 2009a), Kepler (Borucki et al. 2009), and ground-based telescopes (Sing & López-Morales 2009; de Mooij & Snellen 2009; Gillon et al. 2009b).
Combining the photometric measurements at different wavelengths allows us to map the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the planet and to constrain its chemical composition, its thermal distribution efficiency, and a possible stratospheric thermal inversion (see, e.g., Charbonneau et al. 2008; Knutson et al. 2008). Such inversions have been detected for the highly irradiated planets HD 209458b (Burrows et al. 2007b; Knutson et al. 2008), TrES-2b (O'Donovan et al. 2009), TrES-4b (Knutson et al. 2009), XO-1b (Machalek et al. 2008), and XO-2b (Machalek et al. 2009). These results are in rather good agreement with the theoretical division of hot Jupiters into two classes based on their level of irradiation (Hubeny et al. 2003; Burrows et al. 2007b; Harrington et al. 2007; Burrows et al. 2008; Fortney et al. 2008a,b). Under this division, the planets warmer than required for condensation of high-opacity gaseous molecules like TiO/VO, tholins, or polyacetylenes should show a stratospheric temperature inversion because of the absorption in their upper-atmosphere of a significant fraction of the large incident flux by these compounds. The less irradiated planets would lack these gazeous compounds and the resulting temperature inversion. Still, this simple division has recently been challenged by the absence of thermal inversion reported for the strongly irradiated planet TrES-3b by Fressin et al. (2010). This result indicates that, in addition to the irradiation amplitude, other effects like chemical composition, surface gravity, and the stellar spectrum probably affect the temperature profile of hot Jupiters.
With an irradiation
erg s-1 cm-2,
the planet CoRoT-2b could be expected to show such a temperature
inversion, according to the theoretical division mentioned above. This
planet is the second one discovered by the CoRoT transit survey mission
(Alonso et al. 2008, hereafter A08). Spectral analysis and evolution modeling of the host star leads to a solar-type dwarf with a mass
and an effective temperature
K (Bouchy et al. 2008, hereafter B08). A08 derived for the planet a radius of
RJ and a mass of
MJ, leading to a density of
g cm-3,
very close to the value for Jupiter. This density is surprising because
the radius of massive planets is expected to approach Jupiter's
asymptotically. In this context, it is worth noticing the probable
youth of the system. Indeed, the presence of the
Li I absorption line in the stellar spectrum and the strong
emission in the Ca II H and K line cores (B08)
suggest that the star is still close to the zero-age main-sequence
(ZAMS) and is thus younger than 0.5 Gyr (B08), in full agreement
with the short rotational period of
4.5 days deduced from CoRoT photometry (A08).
Still, CoRoT-2b is not young enough to prevent it from falling into the
subgroup of planets with a radius larger than predicted by basic models
of irradiated planets (Burrows et al. 2007a;
Fortney et al. 2007). Most of these planets show an orbital
eccentricity compatible with zero. Nevertheless, these planets could
still have undergone a tidal heating during their evolution high enough
to explain their low density (Jackson et al. 2008b; Ibgui & Burrows 2009),
so it is important to measure their present eccentricity very precisely
to constrain their tidal and thermal history. The precise measurement
of a planet's occultation provides strong constraints on the orbital
eccentricity, especially on the parameter
,
where e is the eccentricity and
the argument of periastron (see e.g. Charbonneau et al. 2005; Knutson et al. 2009).
In the case of CoRoT-2b, the dynamical interest of these occultation
observations is reinforced by the large jitter noise of the young host
star (B08), which makes precise determination of a tiny eccentricity
very challenging for the radial velocity (RV) method alone.
With the goals of better characterizing the atmospheric properties of
CoRoT-2b (SED, inversion) and improve our understanding of its low
density (tidal heating), we observed the occultation of this planet
at 4.5 and 8 m with Spitzer/IRAC
(DDT program 486). A partial transit was also observed with VLT/FORS2
to put one more constraint on the orbital parameters. We report here
the results of the analysis of these new data. Section 2 presents
our IRAC and VLT observations and their reduction. We analyzed this new
photometry in combination with CoRoT transit photometry and published
RVs. This combined analysis is presented in Sect. 3. We present
and discuss our results in Sect. 4 and give our conclusions in
Sect. 5.
2 New photometric observations
2.1 IRAC occultation photometry
CoRoT-2 (2MASS 19270649+0123013,
)
was observed by Spitzer (Werner et al. 2004)
during an occultation of its planet on 2008 November 1 from
03h50 to 08h50 UT. The observations were performed with the
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) (Fazio et al. 2004) in full array mode (
pixels, 1.2 arcsec/pixel) simultaneously at 4.5 and 8
m.
The telescope was not repointed during the course of the observations
to minimize the motion of the stars on the array. We carefully selected
the pointing in order (1) to avoid the bright star
2MASS 19270954+0123280 (
)
that would have saturated the detector for any exposure time while
ensuring that it will not fall into one of several regions outside the
FOV that are known to result in significant scattered light on the
detectors, and (2) to avoid areas of the array with known
bad pixels or significant gradients in the flat field, as well as
areas known to be affected by scattered starlight. We also ensured that
no bright star would have been located in stray light avoidance zones
.
An effective integration time of 10.4 s was used during the
whole run, resulting in 1385 images for each channel. For our
analysis, we used the images calibrated by the standard Spitzer pipeline (version S18.0) and delivered to the community as basic calibrated data (BCD). We converted fluxes from the Spitzer
units of specific intensity (MJy/sr) to photon counts, and aperture
photometry was obtained for CoRoT-2 in each image using the IRAF/DAOPHOT
software (Stetson 1987).
In both channels, the point-spread function (PSF) of the target is slightly blended with the one of the fainter (
)
redder (
vs. 0.47 for CoRoT-2) star 2MASS 19270636+0122577 located at
4'' (see Fig. 1). A small aperture radius was used for both channels (4.5
m: 4 pixels, 8
m:
3.5 pixels). The aperture was centered in each image by fitting a
Gaussian profile on CoRoT-2. A mean sky background was measured in an
annulus extending from 8 to 16 pixels from the center of the
aperture and subtracted from the measured flux for each image. Each
measurement was compared to the median of the ten adjacent images and
rejected as an outlier if the difference was larger than four times its
theoretical error bar. Twenty-four points (3.5%) were rejected at
4.5
m and 37 points (2.7%) at 8
m. Figure 2
shows the resulting timeseries for both channels. Despite its small
size, the photometric aperture does not only contain counts caused by
CoRoT-2 but also by the nearby fainter star, leading to a dilution of
the eclipse.
To estimate this dilution and correct the measured eclipse depths for
it, we used the following procedure. For both channels, we partially
deconvolved the images taken after the occultation, using the
deconvolution program DECPHOT (Gillon et al. 2006, 2007a; Magain et al. 2007). We used the oversampled high-SNR PSF available on Spitzer's web site to deduce the partial PSF needed for this deconvolution. The deconvolved images (see Fig. 1) are oversampled by a factor of 2 and their PSF is a Gaussian with a full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of 2 pixels, corresponding thus to an FWHM of 1 pixel for the original sampling. This has to be compared to an
pixel for the original images. We performed aperture photometry on the PSF model to measure the fraction
of the flux of CoRoT-2 within an aperture of 8 (4.5
m) and 7 (8
m) pixels. At this stage, we compared the total flux
of CoRoT-2 obtained by DECPHOT
for each image to the flux obtained with aperture photometry on the
model images (i.e. the obtained higher-resolution images convolved by
the partial PSF model). This last measurement should be the sum of
and the contaminating flux from the nearby star. Subtracting
to this quantity and dividing by the same
finally gave us an estimation of the aperture contamination due to the
nearby star. Considering all the images taken after the occultation, we
obtained a dilution of
% and
%, respectively at 4.5 and 8
m.
![]() |
Figure 1:
Top: zoom on CoRoT-2 and the nearby fainter star within an IRAC image taken at 4.5 |
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![]() |
Figure 2:
IRAC occultation photometry obtained at 4.5 |
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2.2 VLT/FORS2 transit photometry
A partial transit of CoRoT-2b was observed on 2008 September 9 with the FORS2 camera (Appenzeller et al. 1998) installed at the VLT/UT1 (Antu). The FORS2 camera has a mosaic of two 2k 4k MIT
CCDs and is optimized for observations in the red with a very low level
of fringes. It was used several times in the past to obtain
high-precision transit photometry (e.g. Gillon et al. 2007b, 2009a,b; Pont et al. 2007). The high-resolution mode and 1
1 binning were used to optimize the spatial sampling, resulting in a
field of view with a pixel scale of 0.063''/pixel. Airmass
decreased from 1.18 to 1.11, then increased to 1.35 during
the run, which lasted from 23h40 to 3h12 UT. The quality
of the night was photometric.
We acquired 448 images in the z-GUNN+78 filter (
nm,
nm)
with an exposure time ranging from 0.6 to 3 s. After a standard
prereduction, the stellar fluxes were extracted for all the images with
the IRAF/DAOPHOT aperture photometry software. Fifty images
were revealed to be saturated and were discarded from the analysis.
Several sets of reduction parameters were tested, and we kept the one
giving the most precise photometry for the stars of similar brightness
to CoRoT-2. After a careful selection of reference stars, differential
photometry was obtained. The resulting transit lightcurve is shown in
Fig. 3. After subtraction of the best-fit model (see next section), the obtained residuals show a standard deviation of
,
close to the mean theoretical noise (
).
![]() |
Figure 3: Top: VLT/FORS2 z-band transit photometry with the best-fitting transit+systematics model superimposed (in red). Middle and bottom: residuals of the fit unbinned and binned per 20 min. The larger scatter during the transit probably comes from the inhomogeneity of the stellar surface (spots). |
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3 Data analysis
3.1 The data and model
We performed a global determination of the system parameters based on our new photometry in addition to the following data.
- the phase-folded CoRoT transit photometry presented in A08. The 160
measurements of this transit lightcurve were obtained after folding the
78 transits observed by CoRoT using the precise ephemeris deduced
in A08 and after binning the resulting lightcurve with a bin size of
2.5 min. For our analysis, we projected this phase-folded photometry onto the central transit timing presented in A08. To take the uncertainty on the time of minimum light and on the orbital period presented in A08 into account (
HJD and
days), new values were randomly drawn from the corresponding normal distributions at the beginning of each chain of the MCMC analysis (see below) before projecting the phase-folded lightcurve;
- the radial velocity (RV) measurements published in A08 and B08
and obtained by the HARPS and SOPHIE spectrographs. These RVs encompass
two transits. These spectroscopic transit observations were obtained to
measure the sky-projected angle
between the planetary orbital axis and the stellar rotation axis via the observation of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect (RM; Queloz et al. 2000). We included these spectroscopic transit observations in our analysis to benefit from as many constraints as possible on the orbital and eclipses parameters.
3.2 Limb-darkening
For both photometric transits, a quadratic limb-darkening law was
assumed. For the FORS2 lightcurve, the quadratic coefficients u1 and u2 were kept fixed to 0.23 and 0.32, the values deduced from Claret's tables (2000, 2004) for
K,
and [Fe/H] = 0.0 (B08). Considering the excellent quality of the
CoRoT transit photometry, we allowed the quadratic coefficients u1 and u2 to float in our MCMC analysis, using
not these coefficients themselves but the combinations
and
as jump parameters
to minimize the correlation of the obtained uncertainties (Holman et al. 2006).
To obtain a limb-darkening solution consistent with theory, we decided to use a Bayesian penalty on c1 and c2 based on theoretical values and errors for u1 and u2. The broad CoRoT bandpass does not
correspond to any photometric filter, but its maximum of transmission is close to the V and R bands (Deleuil
et al. 2008). We used the method described in Gillon et al. (2009b) to deduce from Claret's tables (2000, 2004) the
theoretical values for u1 and u2 and their errors
and
for the V and R filters and
the spectroscopic parameters of CoRoT-2b reported in B08. For each
coefficient, we took the mean of the values obtained for both filters as the initial value. For the errors, we took the
mean of the errors deduced for both filters and added it quadratically to the difference between both filters to take
our ignorance of the effective wavelength of the photometry into account. We obtained
and
this way for our initial limb-darkening coefficients. Finally, the following Bayesian penalty was added to
our merit function:
![]() |
(1) |
where c'i is the initial value deduced for the coefficient ci and



For the spectroscopic transits, a quadratic limb-darkening law was also assumed. The values u1 = 0.465 and u2 = 0.276 were deduced from Claret's tables for the stellar parameters presented in B08 and for the V-filter, corresponding to the maximum of transmission of the HARPS and SOPHIE instruments. These values were kept fixed in the MCMC.
3.3 Modeled photometric systematic effects
For each lightcurve, the eclipse model was multiplied by a trend model to take known low-frequency noise sources (instrumental and stellar) into account.
At 4.5 m (InSb detector), the measured IRAC fluxes show a strong correlation with the position of the
target star on the array. This effect comes from the inhomogeneous intra-pixel sensitivity of the detector and is
now well-documented (see, e.g., Knutson et al. 2008, and references therein). Following Charbonneau et al. (2008),
we modeled this effect with a quadratic function of the subpixel position of the PSF center:
![]() |
(2) |
where



At 8 m (SiAs dectector), the intra-pixel sensitivity homogeneity is good, but another systematic
affects the photometry. This effect is known as the ``ramp'' because it causes the gain to increase asymptotically over
time for every pixel, with an amplitude depending on their illumination history (see e.g. Knutson et al. 2008 and
references therein). Following Charbonneau et al. (2008) again, we modeled this ramp as a quadratic function of
:
![]() |
(3) |
where

From the CoRoT photometry, the star CoRoT-2 is known to be variable at the 2-3% level on a timescale
of 4.5 days, corresponding to its rotational period (A08; Lanza et al. 2009). For the VLT and IRAC timeseries, we
modeled this low-frequency modulation by a time-dependent quadratic polynomial:
![]() |
(4) |
where

At the end, the VLT/FORS2 trend model thus has three coefficients, the IRAC 4.5 m
3 + 6 -1 = 8 coefficients, and
the IRAC 8
m
3 + 3 -1 = 5 coefficients. All these trend models are linear in their coefficients, so instead of
considering these coefficients as jump parameters in the MCMC, we chose to determine them
by linear least squares minimization at each step of the MCMC after division of the data
by the eclipse model generated from the latest set of jump parameters (see Sect. 3.6). We used the SVD method
for this purpose (Press et al. 1992), which has been found to be very robust.
The CoRoT transit photometry is already corrected for known systematics and the stellar rotational variability. Nevertheless, we
preferred not to assume it perfectly normalized and consider a flux normalization factor
,
which was also
determined via SVD at each step of the MCMC.
3.4 Photometric correlated noise
Taking the correlation of the noise into account is important for
obtaining reliable error bars on the fitted parameters (Pont
et al. 2006). For this
purpose, we followed a procedure similar to the one described by Winn et al. (2008).
For each lightcurve, the standard deviation of the residuals of the
first chain was determined for the best-fitting solution, without
binning and with several time bins ranging from 10
to 30 min. For each binning, the following factor
was computed.
![]() |
(5) |
where N is the mean number of points in each bin, M the number of bins, and






3.5 Systemic RVs and jitter noise
For each RV timeseries, the systemic velocity was determined at each step of the MCMC from the residuals via SVD. Our code is able to account for more linear terms, i.e. for trends in the RV timeseries, but it was not needed here. For the RV data taken outside transit, we assumed a different systemic velocity for the SOPHIE and HARPS data to account for a possible difference of zero-point calibration between both instruments. Following B08, we added a jitter noise of 56 m s-1 quadratically to the errors to account for the stellar activity. For the spectroscopic transit data, we considered the same RV offset during the whole transit, so we did not add any jitter noise but only considered a different systemic velocity for both spectrographs. Our analysis of the residuals of the first MCMC chain showed us that the jitter noise of 56 m s-1 assumed for the data taken outside transit was leading to a residual rms in good agreement with the mean error of the measurements. Still, we had to add an extranoise of 13 m s-1 for the data taken during transit to obtain similar agreement. The need for this extranoise could be explained either by the inhomogenous surface of the spotted star and/or by the systematic errors brought by the measurement of the RV via the fit of a Gaussian profile on the non-symmetric cross-correlation function of the spectrum (see Winn et al. 2005; Triaud et al. 2009).
One could wonder why the correlation of the noise is not treated in a similar way for the spectroscopic and photometric eclipse timeseries. The answer is that the time sampling of the RV timeseries is much poorer than the one of the lightcurves and is similar to the timescale of ingress/egress. We can thus not precisely estimate the level of correlated noise at this frequency via the method described in Sect. 3.4. Still, that the time sampling and the correlation timescale of the noise that we want to model are similar makes the addition of the quadratic difference between the residual rms and the mean RV error a proper method to take this `red' noise into account.
3.6 Jump parameters, priors, and merit function
The jump parameters in our MCMC simulation were
the planet/star area ratio
,
the transit width
(from first to last contact) W, the impact parameter
,
the two Lagrangian parameters
and
where e is the orbital eccentricity and
is
the argument of periastron, and the K2 parameter characterizing the amplitude
of the orbital RV signal (see Gillon et al. 2009b). We assumed a uniform prior distribution
for all these jump parameters.
The products
and
were also jump parameters
in our MCMC, where
is the projected stellar rotational velocity
and
the spin-orbit angle (see Giménez 2006). As we
have an independent determination of
from
spectroscopy (
km s-1, B08), we added the following
Bayesian penatly to our merit function:
![]() |
(6) |
where


A totally independent determination of the orbital period P and time of
minimum light T0 was impossible because we folded the CoRoT transit
photometry with the ephemeris presented in A08. This is why we let these parameters
vary under the control of the following Bayesian penalty:
![]() |
(7) |
where




The merit function used in our analysis was the sum of
the
for each timeseries and of the Bayesian
penalties presented in Eqs. (1), (6), and (7).
Table 1:
CoRoT-2 system parameters and 1-
error limits derived from our MCMC analysis.
3.7 Structure of the analysis
Our analysis was similar to the one presented by Gillon et al. (2009b), consisting of four successive steps.
- 1.
- First, we performed a single MCMC chain aiming to assess the level of correlated noise in the photometry and of jitter noise in the RVs and to update the measurement error bars accordingly. This chain was composed of 105 steps, the first 20% of each chain being considered as its burn-in phase and discarded.
- 2.
- Five new MCMC chains (105 steps each) were performed using the updated measurement error bars. The good convergence and mixing of these five chains
was checked succesfully using the Gelman & Rubin (1992)
statistic. The inferred value and error bars for each parameter were
obtained from the marginalized posterior distribution. The goal of this
second step was to provide us with an improved estimation of the
stellar density
.
- 3.
- The deduced stellar density and the spectroscopic parameters presented in B08 were then used to determine the stellar mass
and age
via a comparison with the stellar evolution models computed with the CLES code (Scuflaire et al. 2008). We obtained a stellar mass
and a stellar age
Gyr.
- 4.
- A new run of 20 MCMC chains was then performed. This step was
identical to the second one, with the exception that, at each step of
the chains, the physical parameters
,
, and
were computed from the relevant jump parameters and the stellar mass. For this, a value was randomly drawn at each step from the normal distribution
derived in the previous step.
4 Results and discussion
Table 1 shows the median values and 68.3% probability interval for the jump and physical parameters given by our MCMC simulation and compares them to the values presented in A08/B08. The planet/star flux ratios reported in Table 1 are the deduced occultation depths corrected for the signal dilution due to the nearby star (see Sect. 2.1). Figure 4 shows the IRAC photometry corrected for the systematic and binned per five minutes, with the best-fitting eclipse model superimposed. The best-fitting models for the CoRoT and spectroscopic transits are presented in Fig. 5.
4.1 CoRoT-2b: a young, bloated, and massive planet in a slightly eccentric and well-aligned orbit
![]() |
Figure 4:
IRAC 4.5 |
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![]() |
Figure 5: Top: CoRoT transit photometry with the best-fitting transit model superimposed. Bottom: HARPS/SOPHIE transit RVs with the best-fitting RM model superimposed. |
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![]() |
Figure 6: Portion of the CoRoT-2 UVES spectrum showing the Li I line and the weak contaminating Fe I line. |
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Our occultation photometry imposes a strong constraint on the parameter
and reveals that it is significantly smaller than zero. We can thus
conclude that the orbit of CoRoT-2 is slightly eccentric.
Unfortunately,
is much less constrained by our data, so the actual values of e and
are poorly known, as shown by their marginalized posterior distribution function (PDF, see Fig. 7). The PDF of e itself is strongly not Gaussian: its 68.7% and 99.9% probability intervals are respectively
0.007 < e < 0.022 and
0.001 < e < 0.037. To test the influence of the Bayesian penalty on T0 and P on the resulting PDF of
,
we performed a new analysis without using these penalties. We obtained
and
.
Thus the obtained period does not disagree significantly (
1.7 sigma)
with the one obtained by A08 from the CoRoT photometry, while the
offset of the occultation remains significative (3.7 sigma, vs.
4.6 sigma using the Bayesian penalties on P and T0).
This offset could come from a slight eccentricity of the orbit, but
also from a dynamical interaction with another object in the system
(see, e.g., Schneider 2004; Holman & Murray 2005; Agol et al. 2005). Still, both the TTV analysis presented in Alonso et al. (2009a)
and the agreement between our deduced period and the one obtained by
A08 argue against this last hypothesis. We thus conclude on a slight
eccentricity of the planetary orbit.
Our result for the spin-orbit projected angle
agrees well with the one reported in B08, confirming a value close to
zero for this parameter. To assess the influence of our Bayesian
penalty on the parameter
,
we performed another MCMC integration without this penalty. We obtained
and
degrees, i.e. in agreement with the ones obtained with the Bayesian penalty, but slightly less precise.
![]() |
Figure 7:
Marginalized PDF obtained for ( from top left to bottom right)
|
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Interestingly, the Spitzer flux estimator online tool
indicates that the differences in magnitude that we measured by
deconvolution photometry between the nearby star and CoRoT-2 at
4.5
m (+1.7) and 8
m (+1.4) are consistent with a late-K or early-M type dwarf star located at the same distance (
200 pc)
as CoRoT-2. As noticed in A08, this is also the case for the optical
magnitude differences from the Exo-dat database and the 2MASS near-IR
magnitudes. In case of gravitational bounding, the angular distance
between both stars would correspond to a physical separation of
800 AU.
It is thus desirable to assess this possible gravitational bounding by
independent measurements (proper motion, radial velocity). In case of
confirmation, CoRoT-2b would follow the tendency for massive planets to
be found preferentially in multiple stellar systems (Eggenberger
et al. 2004).
4.2 Investigating the large radius of CoRoT-2b with coupled tidal-orbital evolution modeling
CoRoT-2b is just one of many transiting planets with a radius larger than can be accomodated by standard thermal evolution models. Given the relatively young age of the planet compared to other known transiting planets, it is worthwhile investigating the planet's radius evolution in some detail, as giant planets are expected to have larger radii at young ages. We used the coupled giant planet tidal and thermal evolution model of Miller et al. (2009) to calculate the planet's evolution and contraction. As in Miller et al., the planet's structure was assumed to have three components: a 50% rock 50% ice core, a fully convective hydrogen-helium envelope with the equation of state of Saumon et al. (1995), and a non-gray atmosphere model described by Fortney et al. (2007). The tidal orbital evolution was described as in Jackson et al. (2008a, 2009). This tidal evolution model assumes that the planet quickly reaches a spin-orbit sychronous state, that the only important source of tidal heating is due to orbital circularization, and that the model is second order in eccentricity.
To determine whether tidal heating can explain the large radius of CoRoT-2b for a variety of tidal quality factors
,
,
and core masses, a grid over initial semi-major axis and eccentricity
was evolved forward in time. We searched for instances in each of these
evolution histories for which the semi-major axis, eccentricity, and
radius are simultaneously within their error ranges. We choose to limit
the age between 20 Myr and 400 Myr. We found that in cases
when the
value is too high (
of 106 or 106.5) there is not sufficient dissipation inside the planet to achieve the observed radius.
However, for the cases of
and
,
all of the observed parameters can be explained as a transient event.
Evolution histories that closely agreed with the observed parameters
are shown in Fig. 8
. The model without tidal heating clearly cannot explain the planet's
larger radius, even given the young system age. This analysis suggests
that if the
value is 105.5
or lower, then it is possible to explain this large radius as a
transient event at the last stage of orbital circularization. Under
this scenario, the planet is spiralling inwards at high speed to its
final tidal disruption, and the fast rotation of the star would not
only stem from its young age but also from the high rate of angular
momentum transfer from the planet's orbit. With such values for
and
,
the future lifetime of CoRoT-2b is 20 Myr at most, which is a
short duration on an astronomical timescale, but is still much larger
than the remaining lifetime of the planet WASP-18b (Hellier et al.
2009) under similar assumptions.
In some planetary systems, an outer companion might continously drive
the eccentricity of the inner planet offseting circularization by tides
such that the eccentricy is found in a semi-equilibrium state,
described by Mardling (2007). Let us assume this scenario is occurring
and the planet's net radiated luminosity, ,
at the surface is balanced by tidal heating inside,
.
Using Table 1 from Miller et al. (2009)
![]() |
= | ![]() |
|
= | ![]() |
(8) |
and assuming that the observed eccentricity of 0.0142 is close to its equilibrium value, then this would imply that


![]() |
Figure 8:
Possible tidal evolution histories for CoRoT-2. The radius at optical
wavelengths that the planet would be observed to have during the
transit is shown in the upper left. The semi-major axis of the orbit is shown in the upper right. The ratio of input tidal power to net radiated power is shown in the lower left. The eccentricity is shown in the lower right. (See Miller et al. 2009 for further details.) In these cases:
|
Open with DEXTER |
4.3 Atmospheric properties of the young planet CoRoT-2b
The thermal emission of the planet is detected in both IRAC channels, as can be seen in Figs. 4 and 9. Unfortunately, the precision on the occultation depth at 8 m is rather poor, thus bringing a weak constraint on the planetary SED. CoRoT-2 is indeed a faint target for Spitzer at 8
m, the theoretical error (photon, read-out and background noise) per 10.4 s exposure being
0.84%, while it is
0.29% at 4.5
m. The standard deviation of the residuals of our best-fitting solution are close to these values: 1.09% (8
m) and 0.32 % (4.5
m),
i.e., respectively, 1.3 and 1.1 times worse than the theoretical
noise budget. Assuming that the observed noise is purely white and
taking the error on the flux normalization into account, we would
expect an error of
0.06% on the occultation depth at 8
m, while our MCMC analysis, which considers the low-frequency noises, leads to an error
1.8 times
larger. We can thus conclude that the high level of correlated noise
(due to the ramp, the low-frequency stellar and background variability,
the blend with the nearby fainter star, and other unknown effects) has
a significant effect on the final precision. This is also the case at
4.5
m:
for purely white noise, we would have expected a precision of 0.016% on
the occultation depth, while our actual error is
2.5 times greater.
Table 2: Comparison of the measured planet-to-star flux ratio and the values predicted by our three models. See text for details.
![]() |
Figure 9:
Marginalized PDF for the IRAC occultation
depth at 4.5 |
Open with DEXTER |
![]() |
Figure 10:
IRAC color-color diagram for six hot Jupiters. Symbol sizes are scaled by the
level of incident starlight received by the planet. The Fortney et al. (2008a,b)
classification is also indicated. The location of CoroT-2 falls in the shade region,
indicating the 1- |
Open with DEXTER |
![[*]](/icons/foot_motif.png)
For CoRoT-2b, optical measurements are also available (Alonso et al. 2009b; Snellen et al. 2009b). These and our two IRAC measurements are compared in Fig. 11 and Table 2 to three different models:
- Model 1 (m1) assuming an efficient heat distribution on the night side of the planet;
- Model 2 (m2) assuming no heat distribution on the night side and no temperature inversion;
- Model 3 (m3) assuming no heat distribution on the night side and a deep TiO/VO-induced temperature inversion.




![]() |
(9) |
Comparing the model m1 to the two others, we obtain



![]() |
Figure 11:
Synthetic planet-star flux density ratios from three hot-Jupiter atmosphere
models (from Barman et al. 2005). The top two curves are from models with incident stellar flux
constrained on the day side, while the lower curve corresponds to a model with
unifom day-to-night redistribution of stellar flux. The dotted line shows the
flux-ratio for a planet with a TiO/VO-induced temperature inversion. Solid
points, with 1- |
Open with DEXTER |
5 Conclusion
Using Spitzer and its IRAC camera, we measured an occultation of the young and massive planet CoRoT-2b
at 4.5 m and 8
m. In addition, we observed a partial transit of the planet with the Very Large Telescope
and its FORS2 camera.
Our global analysis of CoRoT, Spitzer, and ground-based (FORS2 photometry + RVs) data confirms the low density of the planet (
with
MJ and
RJ). Constraining the system to be at most a few hundred Myr and the present orbit to be slightly eccentric (
)
and using coupled tidal-orbital evolution modeling, we find a self
consistent thermal & tidal evolution history that may explain the
radius through a transient tidal circularization and corresponding
tidal heating inside the interior of the planet. Under this scenario,
the planet will be tidally disrupted within 20 Myr at most.
The occultation depths that we measured at 4.5 m and 8
m are
% and
%, respectively. In addition to the optical measurements reported by Alonso et al. (2009b) and Snellen et al. (2009b),
these values favor a poor heat distribution on the night side of the
planet and the absence of thermal inversion, but measurements at other
wavelengths are needed to confirm this point.
This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA. The authors thank the ESO staff on the VLT telescopes for their diligent and competent help during the observations. M. Gillon acknowledges support from the Belgian Science Policy Office in the form of a Return Grant.
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Footnotes
- ...
m
- Based on data collected with the VLT/FORS2 instrument at ESO Paranal Observatory, Chile (programs 081.C-0413(B)).
- ...
- The photometric timeseries used in this work are only available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/511/A3
- ... zones
- For details, see the IRAC Data Handbook available at http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/irac
- ... IRAF/DAOPHOT
- IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
- ... site
- http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/irac/psf.html
- ... parameters
- Jump parameters are the model parameters that are randomly perturbed at each step of the MCMC.
- ... tool
- http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/tools/starpet/
- ... colors
- Here color is simply calculated by taking the ratio of the planet fluxes in the IRAC channels, they are not scaled by the flux ratios for Vega.
All Tables
Table 1:
CoRoT-2 system parameters and 1-
error limits derived from our MCMC analysis.
Table 2: Comparison of the measured planet-to-star flux ratio and the values predicted by our three models. See text for details.
All Figures
![]() |
Figure 1:
Top: zoom on CoRoT-2 and the nearby fainter star within an IRAC image taken at 4.5 |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 2:
IRAC occultation photometry obtained at 4.5 |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 3: Top: VLT/FORS2 z-band transit photometry with the best-fitting transit+systematics model superimposed (in red). Middle and bottom: residuals of the fit unbinned and binned per 20 min. The larger scatter during the transit probably comes from the inhomogeneity of the stellar surface (spots). |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 4:
IRAC 4.5 |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 5: Top: CoRoT transit photometry with the best-fitting transit model superimposed. Bottom: HARPS/SOPHIE transit RVs with the best-fitting RM model superimposed. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 6: Portion of the CoRoT-2 UVES spectrum showing the Li I line and the weak contaminating Fe I line. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 7:
Marginalized PDF obtained for ( from top left to bottom right)
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 8:
Possible tidal evolution histories for CoRoT-2. The radius at optical
wavelengths that the planet would be observed to have during the
transit is shown in the upper left. The semi-major axis of the orbit is shown in the upper right. The ratio of input tidal power to net radiated power is shown in the lower left. The eccentricity is shown in the lower right. (See Miller et al. 2009 for further details.) In these cases:
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 9:
Marginalized PDF for the IRAC occultation
depth at 4.5 |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 10:
IRAC color-color diagram for six hot Jupiters. Symbol sizes are scaled by the
level of incident starlight received by the planet. The Fortney et al. (2008a,b)
classification is also indicated. The location of CoroT-2 falls in the shade region,
indicating the 1- |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 11:
Synthetic planet-star flux density ratios from three hot-Jupiter atmosphere
models (from Barman et al. 2005). The top two curves are from models with incident stellar flux
constrained on the day side, while the lower curve corresponds to a model with
unifom day-to-night redistribution of stellar flux. The dotted line shows the
flux-ratio for a planet with a TiO/VO-induced temperature inversion. Solid
points, with 1- |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
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