A Prograde, Low-inclination Orbit for the Very Hot Jupiter WASP-3b
Abstract
We present new spectroscopic and photometric observations of the transiting exoplanetary system WASP-3. Spectra obtained during two separate transits exhibit the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect and allow us to estimate the sky-projected angle between the planetary orbital axis and the stellar rotation axis, λ = 3.3^(+2.5)_(–4.4) deg. This alignment between the axes suggests that WASP-3b has a low orbital inclination relative 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 occultation of material erupting from the stellar photosphere, although it is more likely to be an artifact caused by moonlight scattered into the spectrograph.
Additional Information
© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Received 2009 November 20; accepted 2010 April 3; published 2010 April 28. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank N. Madhusudhan, Michael L. Stevens, and Robert Noyes for helpful discussions. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for helping to clarify the interpretation of the RV spike. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. A.T. and K.dK. thank the MIT UROP Endowment Fund and Office for financial support. J.N.W. is grateful to the NASA Origins program for support through grants NNX09AD36G and NNX09AB33G, and to the MIT Class of 1942 for a Career Development Professorship. J.A.J. is an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow with support from the NSF grant AST-0702821. Facilities: FLWO:1.2m, UH:2.2m, Keck:IAttached Files
Published - 0004-637X_715_1_421.pdf
Accepted Version - 1004.0692.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 36197
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130107-103218073
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- NNX09AD36G
- NASA
- NNX09AB33G
- NASA
- MIT Class of 1942 Career Development Professorship
- AST-0702821
- NSF
- Created
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2013-01-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field