Orbital Orientations of Exoplanets: Hat-p-4b is Prograde and Hat-p-14b is Retrograde
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Author(s)
Winn, Joshua Nathan
Howard, Andrew W.
Johnson, John Asher
Marcy, Geoffrey W.
Isaacson, Howard
Shporer, Avi
Bakos, Gaspar A.
Hartman, Joel D.
Holman, Matthew J.
Albrecht, Simon H.
Date Issued
February 2011
Journal
Astronomical Journal
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Winn, Joshua N. et al. “ORBITAL ORIENTATIONS OF EXOPLANETS: HAT-P-4b IS PROGRADE AND HAT-P-14b IS RETROGRADE.” The Astronomical Journal 141.2 (2011): 63.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We present observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for two exoplanetary systems, revealing the orientations of their orbits relative to the rotation axes of their parent stars. HAT-P-4b is prograde, with a sky-projected spin-orbit angle of λ = –4.9 ± 11.9 deg. In contrast, HAT-P-14b is retrograde, with λ = 189.1 ± 5.1 deg. These results conform with a previously noted pattern among the stellar hosts of close-in giant planets: hotter stars have a wide range of obliquities and cooler stars have low obliquities. This, in turn, suggests that three-body dynamics and tidal dissipation are responsible for the short-period orbits of many exoplanets. In addition, our data revealed a third body in the HAT-P-4 system, which could be a second planet or a companion star.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/141/2/63
