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Published April 1, 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

The California Planet Survey. III. A Possible 2:1 Resonance in the Exoplanetary Triple System HD 37124

Abstract

We present new radial velocities from Keck Observatory and both Newtonian and Keplerian solutions for the triple-planet system orbiting HD 37124. The orbital solution for this system has improved dramatically since the third planet was first reported in Vogt et al. with an ambiguous orbital period. The period ambiguity is resolved, and the outer two planets have an apparent period commensurability of 2:1. A dynamical analysis finds both resonant and non-resonant configurations consistent with the radial velocity data and constrains the mutual inclinations of the planets to be <~30°. We discuss HD 37124 in the context of the other 19 exoplanetary systems with apparent period commensurabilities, which we summarize in a table. We show that roughly one in three well-characterized multiplanet systems has a apparent low-order period commensurability, which is more than would naïvely be expected if the periods of exoplanets in known multiplanet systems were drawn randomly from the observed distribution of planetary orbital periods.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 August 22; accepted 2011 January 5; published 2011 March 9. Based on observations obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated jointly by the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. The Keck Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank the referee, Daniel Fabrycky, for his constructive and thorough review, which significantly improved this manuscript. J.T.W. received support from NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant NNX10AI52G. D.V. and E.B.F. were partially supported by NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant NNX09AB35G. A.W.H. gratefully acknowledges support from a Townes Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. This work was partially supported by funding from the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, which is supported by the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. The work herein is based on observations obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated jointly by the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. The Keck Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We 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. The authors acknowledge the University of Florida High- Performance Computing Center for providing computational resources and support that have contributed to the results reported within this paper. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System and the Exoplanet Orbit Database at exoplanets.org. Facility: Keck: I

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August 19, 2023
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October 23, 2023