Centauri Dreams

If our Solar System had a ‘hot Jupiter’ that migrated inward after Mars, Earth and Venus had formed, would any of the terrestrial planets have survived? It’s a question worth pondering given how many hot Jupiters we’ve turned up, raising the question of how these planets form in the first place. One possibility is formation in situ, close to the parent star. But there is also an argument for migration, with planets forming in cooler regions further out in the system and migrating inward as a result of interactions with the protoplanetary disk or other planets.

Perhaps the planet known as K2-33b can help us with some of this. It is no more than 11 million years old, in an orbit that creates a transit every 5.4 days. With follow-up observations by the MEarth arrays on Mount Hopkins (AZ) and at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, researchers led by Andrew Mann (University of Texas at Austin) have been able to determine that K2-33b is a Neptune-class world some five times the size of Earth, orbiting at a distance of about 8 million kilometers. The host is an M-class star several million years old.

“Young stars tend to be very blotchy, with starspots that can mimic a transiting planet. Our observations ruled out stellar activity and proved that the Kepler signal came from a bona fide planet,” says Elisabeth Newton of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), co-author of a study slated to appear in the Astronomical Journal. “We were also able to measure the planet’s size and orbit more accurately.”

High resolution imaging using the Keck II instrument and Doppler spectroscopy at McDonald Observatory in Texas also confirmed the planetary nature of the detection. Two teams went to work independently on this world, the second led by Trevor David (Caltech), using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to validate the planet. The hope of both is that K2-33b will help us understand planet formation, particularly since the parent star still retains portions of its disk material, a fact confirmed by the Spitzer instrument. Caltech’s David comments:

“Astronomers know that star formation has just completed in this region, called Upper Scorpius, and roughly a quarter of the stars still have bright protoplanetary disks. The remainder of stars in the region do not have such disks, so we reasoned that planet formation must be nearly complete for these stars, and that there would be a good chance of finding young exoplanets around them.”

Image: K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date and makes a complete orbit around its star in about five days. These two characteristics combined provide new directions for planet-formation theories. K2-33b could have formed on a farther out orbit and quickly migrated inward. Alternatively, it could have formed in situ. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt.

Given K2-33b’s proximity to its star, migration would have occurred early indeed, or else the planet is an indication that giant planets actually form this close to their host. Mann’s team points to these possibilities and sketches a course of future research. From the paper, which is to appear in The Astronomical Journal:

The upper limit on K2-33b’s age provided by its ?11 Myr stellar host suggests that it either migrated inwards via disk migration or formed in-situ, as planet-star and planet-planet interactions work on much longer timescales… This discovery makes it unlikely that such long-term dynamical interactions are responsible for all close-in planets. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the dominant migration or formation mechanism for close-in planets given the sample size and incomplete understanding of our transit-search pipeline’s completeness.

That’s a telling point, for selection effects may be at work here — K2-33b may have an atypical history that made its detection easier for a planet of this age. To learn more, we need to widen the search:

A full search of all young clusters and stellar associations surveyed by the K2 mission, with proper treatment of detection completeness is underway. This, along with improved statistics provided by the TESS and PLATO missions, will provide an estimate of the planet occurrence rate as a function of time. Trends (or a lack of trends) in this occurrence rate could set constraints on planetary migration timescales.

Publishing in Nature, Trevor David’s team takes note of K2-33b’s peculiarities, which could indeed point to the planet being an outlier:

Interestingly, large planets are rarely found close to mature low-mass stars; fewer than 1% of M-dwarfs host Neptune-sized planets with orbital periods of < 10 days, while ? 20% host Earth-sized planets in the same period range. This may be a hint that K2-33b is still contracting, losing atmosphere, or undergoing radial migration. Future observations may test these hypotheses, and potentially reveal where in the protoplanetary disk the planet formed.

What we do have indisputable evidence for is that a large planet can be found at a small orbital distance not long after the dissipation of the system’s nebular gas. Given the short timescales available here, the paper argues, tidal circularization of an eccentric planet or planet-planet or planet-star interactions cannot explain K2-33b’s current orbit. Formation in place or migration from within the gas disk remain as possibilities. We have a lot of work ahead to figure out just how unusual this planet is, and whether or not it is still in the process of adjusting its orbit.

The papers are Mann et al., “Zodiacal Exoplanets in Time (ZEIT) III: A short-period planet orbiting a pre-main-sequence star in the Upper Scorpius OB Association,” accepted at The Astronomical Journal (preprint); and David et al., “A Neptune-sized transiting planet closely orbiting a 5–10-million-year-old star,” Nature, published online 20 June 2016 (abstract).

I would like to thank the many Centauri Dreams readers who contributed to the successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a year’s worth of study of KIC 8462852. As I write, there is less than an hour to go, but we have already gone well over the needed $100,000 mark. Congratulations to Tabitha Boyajian, and thanks for all the work she and her colleagues have put into this effort. Now we have a year of observations ahead using the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. The long-term observations will be crucial because we don’t know what to expect in terms of sudden dimming in this star’s light curve.

What a pleasure it is to write for this audience. Readers here have played a large role in pushing this project over the top, and we’ll follow the work on KIC 8462852 closely in coming days. Meanwhile, have a look at Penn State’s Jason Wright discussing ‘Tabby’s Star.’

Speaking of Unusual Stars…

If KIC 8462852 is a star that some believe is becoming less bright over time (the controversy between Bradley Schaefer and Michael Hippke is well documented here), FU Orionis is the opposite, a star whose notable brightening in 1936 is the most extreme such event we have seen around a star of Sun-like size. This is intriguing stuff, because we seem to be looking at a solar system in its infancy, undergoing a process that our own Sun may have experienced on the way toward the formation of the planets in our system. If so, this stellar activity would have changed the chemistry in the surrounding disk, with implications for how planets form.

The 1936 brightening event took FU Orionis, some 1500 light years away in the constellation Orion, from an apparent visual magnitude of 16.5 to 9.6, and the star is now around magnitude 9, with visible light observations showing a slow fade in progress. Stars like this — V1057 Signi is another — are young pre-main sequence stars in a class named after FU Orionis and nicknamed FUors. All exhibit extreme changes in magnitude and spectral type, evidently caused by the star consuming inner disk materials in a sudden feeding spree.

Joel Green (Space Telescope Science Institute) and colleagues wondered when FU Orionis might return to pre-1936 brightness levels, and what effect such brightening events could have on early system formation. The team used infrared data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and checked it against Spitzer Space Telescope data from 2004. Green presented the results, showing the star’s behavior over the twelve-year interval, at the just concluded meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego.

Image: This artist’s concept illustrates how the brightness of outbursting star FU Orionis has been slowly fading since its initial flare-up in 1936. The star is pictured with the disk of material that surrounds it. Researchers found that it has dimmed by about 13 percent at short infrared wavelengths from 2004 (left) to 2016 (right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The brightening of FU Orionis observed in 1936 was the result of the infant star devouring gas and dust from its surrounding disk, a three-month process that caused it to become 100 times brighter in short order, heating the disk to temperatures up to 7000 K. It’s clear from the most recent study that the star continues to ingest disk material. According to this JPL news release, it has consumed the equivalent of 18 Jupiters in the eighty years since the first outburst.

Even so, the SOFIA measurements confirm that the total amount of visible and infrared light from FU Orionis has decreased by about 13 percent during the twelve years since the Spitzer data were taken. The dimming is occurring at short infrared wavelengths only, an indication that about 13 percent of the hottest disk material has disappeared even as cooler materials have remained intact. Says Green:

“A decrease in the hottest gas means that the star is eating the innermost part of the disk, but the rest of the disk has essentially not changed in the last 12 years. This result is consistent with computer models, but for the first time we are able to confirm the theory with observations… The material falling into the star is like water from a hose that’s slowly being pinched off. Eventually the water will stop.”

Based on this work, we could expect FU Orionis to return to 1936 brightness levels within the next several hundred years. Still unanswered is the question of what set off the rampant activity in the first place. The fact that a protoplanetary disk can experience such sudden activity is striking. Green’s team believes that a similar event in the early Sun’s history could explain why materials close to the Sun have a different composition than those farther out, accounting for the different abundances of certain elements on Mars than on the Earth. The brightening would have had a much larger effect on the inner disk than on more distant materials.

The presentation is Green, “The Evolution of FU Orionis Disks,” American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #228, id.#308.05 (abstract).

Given everything we’re learning about planets around other suns, it’s frustrating that we have so little information about the chemical composition of the rocky planets we’ve found thus far. Now we have a new study, announced at the San Diego meeting of the American Astronomical Society, that offers data on a ‘planet-like body’ whose surface layers are being consumed by the white dwarf SDSSJ1043+0855. Although it’s been known for some time that the star has been devouring rocky material orbiting around it, the new work offers a striking view of the accretion process and the composition of what was once a differentiated body.

At least, that’s the best interpretation of the data taken from the Keck Observatory’s HIRES spectrometer (installed on the 10-meter Keck I instrument) and the Hubble Space Telescope. White dwarf stars are the remains of stars like the Sun — this one was once a few times the Sun’s mass — that have gone through their red giant phase and expelled all their outer material. The ‘planet-like body’ the researchers refer to is likely the remnant of a surviving planet.

To study the chemical composition of such a world, Carl Melis (UC-San Diego) and Patrick Dufour (Université de Montreal) used the spectra of the rocky accretion material as filtered through the atmosphere of the star. The researchers believe that using these methods, they are able to analyze specific layers of the body undergoing accretion. We learn that the object shows large amounts of carbon, combined with smaller amounts of calcium and oxygen.

We may be looking, Melis and Dufour suggest, at calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), a mineral widely found in shelled marine organisms here on Earth. As this news release from Keck Observatory points out, incorporating carbon in the surfaces of rocky objects is difficult, which is why the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System are sometimes described as being in a ‘carbon desert.’ The surface being accreted by SDSSJ1043+0855 shows perhaps as much as several hundred times the amount of carbon found on the surface of the Earth.

Is it possible that life played a role in this object’s history? Melis comments:

“…the presence of such high levels of carbon is unique and really needs to be explained. Our choice of calcium-carbonate as a potential carrier of the carbon provides a natural way for it to be locked up in the planet and eventually delivered to the white dwarf star, is entirely consistent with the observations in hand, and of course is suggestive. That’s really the hidden subtext. When people think about finding extra-terrestrial life, they think about Hollywood dramatizations. But the first evidence of life outside of our Solar system will probably come in a much subtler form. More likely than not, it’s going to come as a nuanced signature that may not be immediately recognizable.”

Image (click to enlarge): Artist’s impression of the surface of the massive, planet-like body being devoured by the white dwarf SDSSJ1043+0855. The Keck Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope data (shown in inset) show calcium and carbon, the presence of which can be explained with a model suggesting the surface of the planet may have been encrusted in limestone (calcium carbonate). This material was removed from the surface of the massive rocky body, probably through large-scale collisions, subsequently shredded into a disk of material, and accreted by the white dwarf star (ringed object seen in the planet’s sky). Credit: A. Hara/C. Melis/W. M. Keck Observatory.

But calcium carbonate isn’t always the result of biology, and the current work examines only the accretion materials that have been absorbed by the parent white dwarf. Melis and Dufour would like to look next at surrounding dust before it falls into the star, using the James Webb Space Telescope if possible to confirm whether calcium carbonate is present. This would allow a better estimate of whether the amount of calcium carbonate is consistent with natural processes.

Centauri Dreams‘ take: Calcium carbonate or not, it’s striking that using accreted material in the region of a white dwarf and in its atmosphere can help us understand the structure of an exoplanet. We move beyond bulk chemical composition to differentiate between the layers of the body being accreted. That’s a highly useful tool for studying planetary structure.

The presentation is Melis and Dufour, “The Surface of a Limestone-Rich World?” American Astronomical Society 20 June 2016, AAS Meeting #228, id.#201.03 (abstract).

Before getting into today’s subject, the discovery of an interesting long-period circumbinary planet, I want to make another pitch for Centauri Dreams readers to support the Kickstarter campaign for Tabby’s Star. I’ve written often about this mysterious star whose light curves are anomalous and demand further study. Trying to find out what’s happening around KIC 8462852 means acquiring more data, and the Kickstarter campaign would provide an entire year of observations using the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.

We’re now down to 48 hours and of the $100,000 needed, about three-fourths has been raised. Coming down the homestretch, the remaining $24,000 should be achievable, but it looks to be a dramatic finish. If you haven’t been following the KIC 8462852 story, you can check the archives here, or for a quick overview, see my article A Kickstarter Campaign for KIC 8462852. Whatever you can do to help would be hugely appreciated as we try to learn as much as possible about what Penn State’s Jason Wright has called ‘the most mysterious star in our galaxy.’

Kepler-1647b: Insights into Planet Formation

On to the ongoing meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, where the discovery of the largest planet yet found around a double-star system was announced. That’s ‘around’ a double-star system rather than ‘in’ one, the planet in question orbiting both stars. Such circumbinary planets are welded to the imagination of Star Wars viewers because of the world Tatooine, the cinematic home of Luke Skywalker, and as in the film, they cast a hypnotic spell on the imagination as we think about what such worlds might look like.

No standing on a planetary surface to watch interesting sunsets here, though. Kepler-1647b is a gas giant, about 3700 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, and at 4.4 billion years old, it’s roughly the same age as the Earth. The planet orbits its eclipsing binary host — two solar mass stars — every 1100 days, making it the longest-period transiting circumbinary planet yet discovered. Despite the lengthy orbital period, three times longer than the Earth’s, Kepler-1647b appears to be in the circumbinary habitable zone for the entire duration of its orbit. Terrestrial moons are theoretically possible, but no evidence for them turns up in the data.

Image: Artist’s impression of the simultaneous stellar eclipse and planetary transit events on Kepler-1647 b. Such a double eclipse event is known as a syzygy. Credit: Lynette Cook.

The discovery of this Jupiter-like world is the work of a team led by Veselin Kostov (NASA Goddard). A transit was originally detected back in 2011 but additional data were needed before the circumbinary planet could be confirmed, part of the problem being the length of the planet’s orbital period. As co-author William Welsh (San Diego State University) notes: “…finding circumbinary planets is much harder than finding planets around single stars. The transits are not regularly spaced in time and they can vary in duration and even depth.”

At three years, Kepler-1647b’s orbital period is the longest of any confirmed transiting planet. The gas giant is also the largest circumbinary planet yet found since the first such world, Kepler-16b, was detected through its transits. We now know of 10 transiting circumbinary planets in eight eclipsing binary systems, and what’s intriguing here is that all of these except Kepler-1647b are near the critical orbital distance for dynamical stability. Get any closer to the binary host, in other words, and their orbits would become unstable.

But Kepler-1647b is on a much wider orbit and its large size contrasts with all previously discovered circumbinary planets, which have been Saturn-sized or smaller. Theoretical models had predicted that Jupiter-mass circumbinary worlds should be less common and should orbit at large distances from the central binary. The discovery of a gas giant on a wide orbit is thus consistent with these models. No long-period circumbinary worlds have been detected before this, a fact whose implications for planetary evolution are discussed in the paper:

As important as a new discovery of a CBP [circumbinary planet] is to indulge our basic human curiosity about distant worlds, its main significance is to expand our understanding of the inner workings of planetary systems in the dynamically rich environments of close binary stars. The orbital parameters of CBPs, for example, provide important new insight into the properties of protoplanetary disks and shed light on planetary formation and migration in the dynamically-challenging environments of binary stars. In particular, the observed orbit of Kepler-1647b lends strong support to the models suggesting that CBPs form at large distances from their host binaries and subsequently migrate either as a result of planet-disk interaction, or planet-planet scattering…

Image: The orbit of Kepler 1647b (white dot) around its two suns (red and yellow circles). Kepler-1647 b was observed transiting each of its two suns during a single orbit (days 0 and 4.3). Credit: Kostov et al.

The paper is Kostov et al., “Kepler-1647b: the largest and longest-period Kepler transiting circumbinary planet,” accepted at the Astrophysical Journal (preprint). A news release from the University of Hawaii at Manoa is also available.