The oblique orbit of the super-Neptune HAT-P-11b
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Author(s)
Winn, Joshua Nathan
Johnson, John Asher
Howard, Andrew W.
Marcy, Geoffrey W.
Isaacson, Howard
Shopper, Avi
Bakos, Gaspar A.
Hartman, Joel D.
Albrecht, Simon H.
Date Issued
October 2010
Journal
Astrophysical Journal. Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Winn, Joshua N. et al. "The oblique orbit of the super-Neptune HAT-P-11b." Astrophysical Journal Letters 723.2 (2010): L223.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We find the orbit of the Neptune-sized exoplanet HAT-P-11b to be highly inclined relative to the equatorial plane of its host star. This conclusion is based on spectroscopic observations of two transits, which allowed the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect to be detected with an amplitude of 1.5 m s[superscript –1]. The sky-projected obliquity is 103[superscript +26] –10 deg. This is the smallest exoplanet for which spin-orbit alignment has been measured. The result favors a migration scenario involving few-body interactions followed by tidal dissipation. This finding also conforms with the pattern that the systems with the weakest tidal interactions have the widest spread in obliquities. We predict that the high obliquity of HAT-P-11 will be manifest in transit light curves from the Kepler spacecraft: starspot-crossing anomalies will recur at most once per stellar rotation period, rather than once per orbital period as they would for a well-aligned system.
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/10.1088/2041-8205/723/2/L223
