Kepler-47: A Transiting Circumbinary Multiplanet System
- Creators
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Orosz, Jerome A.
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Shporer, Avi
Abstract
We report the detection of Kepler-47, a system consisting of two planets orbiting around an eclipsing pair of stars. The inner and outer planets have radii 3.0 and 4.6 times that of Earth, respectively. The binary star consists of a Sun-like star and a companion roughly one-third its size, orbiting each other every 7.45 days. With an orbital period of 49.5 days, 18 transits of the inner planet have been observed, allowing a detailed characterization of its orbit and those of the stars. The outer planet's orbital period is 303.2 days, and although the planet is not Earth-like, it resides within the classical "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on an Earth-like planet. With its two known planets, Kepler-47 establishes that close binary stars can host complete planetary systems.
Additional Information
© 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 3 August 2012; accepted 22 August 2012; Published Online August 28 2012. Kepler was selected as the 10th mission of the Discovery Program. Funding for this mission is provided by NASA, Science Mission Directorate. The Kepler data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HTS data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NXX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. This work is based in part on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, which is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. J.A.O. and W.F.W. acknowledge support from the Kepler Participating Scientist Program via NASA grant NNX12AD23G; J.A.O., W.F.W., and G.W. also gratefully acknowledge support from the NSF via grant AST-1109928. G.T. acknowledges partial support for this work from NSF grant AST-1007992. J.A.C. and D.C.F. acknowledge NASA support through Hubble Fellowship grants HF-51267.01-A and HF-51272.01-A, respectively, awarded by STScI. Our dear friend and colleague David G. Koch passed away after this work was completed. He was a critical part of Kepler's success, and he will be missed.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - Orosz.SM.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 35155
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.1228380
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20121029-104615052
- NAS5-26555
- NASA
- NXX09AF08G
- NASA
- NNX12AD23G
- NASA
- AST-1109928
- NSF
- AST-1007992
- NSF
- HF-51267.01-A
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- HF-51272.01-A
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- Created
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2012-10-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field