A Prograde, Low-Inclination Orbit for the Very Hot Jupiter WASP-3b
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Author(s)
Tripathi, Anjali
Winn, Joshua Nathan
Johnson, John Asher
Howard, Andrew W.
Halverson, Sam
Marcy, Geoffrey W.
Holman, Matthew J.
de Kleer, Katherine R.
Carter, Joshua Adam
Esquerdo, G. A.
Date Issued
April 2010
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Anjali Tripathi et al. "A Prograde, Low-Inclination Orbit for the Very Hot Jupiter WASP-3b." ApJ 715.1 (2010): 421-428.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We present new spectroscopic and photometric observations of the transiting exo-
planetary system WASP-3. Spectra obtained during two separate transits exhibit the
Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect and allow us to estimate the sky-projected angle be-
tween the planetary orbital axis and the stellar rotation axis, = 3.3+2.5
−4.4 degrees. This
alignment between the axes suggests that WASP-3b has a low orbital inclination rela-
tive to the equatorial plane of its parent star. During our first night of spectroscopic
measurements, we observed an unexpected redshift briefly exceeding the expected sum
of the orbital and RM velocities by 140 m s−1. This anomaly could represent the oc-
cultation of material erupting from the stellar photosphere, although it is more likely
to be an artifact caused by moonlight scattered into the spectrograph.
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/10.1088/0004-637x/715/1/421
