A Third Exoplanetary System with Misaligned Orbital and Stellar Spin Axes

Creators: Johnson, John Asher; Winn, Joshua N.; Albrecht, Simon; Howard, Andrew W.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Gazak, J. Zachary

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Abstract

We present evidence that the WASP-14 exoplanetary system has misaligned orbital and stellar-rotational axes, with an angle λ = -33.1° ± 7.4° between their sky projections. The evidence is based on spectroscopic observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect as well as new photometric observations. WASP-14 is now the third system known to have a significant spin-orbit misalignment, and all three systems have "super-Jupiter" planets (M_P > 3 M_(Jup)) and eccentric orbits. This finding suggests that the migration and subsequent orbital evolution of massive, eccentric exoplanets is somehow different from that of less massive close-in Jupiters, the majority of which have well-aligned orbits.

Additional Information

© 2009 The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Received 2009 July 15; accepted 2009 August 13; published 2009 September 21. Based on data collected at Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; the 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; and the UH 2.2 m telescope. We thank the referee, Dan Fabrycky, for a remarkably timely and helpful review. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the UH 2.2 m telescope staff, including Edwin Sousa, Greg Osterman, and John Dvorak. are also indebted to the Subaru telescope staff, including Dr. Tae-Soo Pyo and Dr. Akito Tajitsu. Special thanks to John Tonry for his helpful discussions and comprehensive instrument documentation for OPTIC, Debra Fischer for her HDS raw reduction code, and Scott Tremaine for his helpful comments and suggestions. J. A. J. is an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow with support from the NSF grant AST-0702821. J. N. W. thanks the NASA Origins of Solar Systems program for support through awards NNX09AD36G and NNX09AB33G, as well as the support of the MIT Class of 1942 Career Development Professorship. S. A. acknowledges support by a Rubicon fellowship from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). We also appreciate funding from NASA grant NNG05GK92G (to G. W. M.), and A. W. H. gratefully acknowledges support from a Townes Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. The authors wish to extend special thanks to those of Hawaiian ancestry on whose sacred mountain of Mauna Kea we are privileged to be guests.Without their generous hospitality, the observations presented herein would not have been possible.

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