Characterizing K2 Planet Discoveries: A Super-Earth Transiting the Bright K Dwarf HIP 116454

Creators: Vanderburg, Andrew; Montet, Benjamin T.; Bowler, Brendan P.; Riddle, Reed

Abstract

We report the first planet discovery from the two-wheeled Kepler (K2) mission: HIP 116454 b. The host star HIP 116454 is a bright (V = 10.1, K = 8.0) K1 dwarf with high proper motion and a parallax-based distance of 55.2 ± 5.4 pc. Based on high-resolution optical spectroscopy, we find that the host star is metal-poor with [Fe/H] =–0.16 ± 0.08 and has a radius R_★ = 0.716 ± 0.024 R_☉ and mass M_★ = 0.775 ± 0.027 M_☉. The star was observed by the Kepler spacecraft during its Two-Wheeled Concept Engineering Test in 2014 February. During the 9 days of observations, K2 observed a single transit event. Using a new K2 photometric analysis technique, we are able to correct small telescope drifts and recover the observed transit at high confidence, corresponding to a planetary radius of R_p = 2.53 ± 0.18 R_⊕. Radial velocity observations with the HARPS-N spectrograph reveal a 11.82 ± 1.33 M_⊕ planet in a 9.1 day orbit, consistent with the transit depth, duration, and ephemeris. Follow-up photometric measurements from the MOST satellite confirm the transit observed in the K2 photometry and provide a refined ephemeris, making HIP 116454 b amenable for future follow-up observations of this latest addition to the growing population of transiting super-Earths around nearby, bright stars.

Additional Information

© 2015 American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 October 20; accepted 2014 December 12; published 2015 February 9. We thank Ball Aerospace and the Kepler/K2 team for their brilliant and tireless efforts to make the K2 mission a possibility and a success. Without their work, this result would not have been possible. We thank Sarah Ballard and Kevin Apps for helpful conversations.We acknowledge many helpful comments from our anonymous reviewer, as well as from Eric Feigelson, our scientific editor. Some of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX13AC07G and by other grants and contracts. This paper includes data collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System; the SIMBAD database and VizieR catalog access tool, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France; the Exoplanet Orbit Database and the Exoplanet Data Explorer at http://www.exoplanets.org; PyAstronomy, the repository and documentation for which can be found at https:// github.com/sczesla/PyAstronomy; and the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. A.V. and B.T.M. are supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, grants No. DGE 1144152 and DGE 1144469, respectively. J.A.J. is supported by generous grants from the David and Lucile Packard and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations. C.B. acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. P.F. acknowledges support by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through Investigador FCT contracts of reference IF/01037/2013 and POPH/FSE (EC) by FEDER funding through the program "Programa Operacional de Factores de Competitividade–COMPETE." W.W.W. was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF P22691-N16). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/ 2007-2013) under grant Agreement No. 313014 (ETAEARTH). This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. This work is based on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Fundacin Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The HARPS-N project was funded by the Prodex program of the Swiss Space Office (SSO), the Harvard University Origin of Life Initiative (HUOLI), the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), the University of Geneva, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute (INAF), University of St. Andrews, Queens University Belfast, and University of Edinburgh. The Robo-AO system is supported by collaborating partner institutions, the California Institute of Technology and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and by the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. AST-0906060, AST-0960343, and AST-1207891, by the Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation, by a gift from Samuel Oschin. 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. 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. WASP-South is hosted by the SAAO and SuperWASP by the Isaac Newton Group and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias; we gratefully acknowledge their ongoing support and assistance. Funding for WASP comes from consortium universities and from the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The Digitized Sky Surveys were produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under U.S. Government grant NAG W-2166. The images of these surveys are based on photographic data obtained using the Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar Mountain and the U.K. Schmidt Telescope. The plates were processed into the present compressed digital form with the permission of these institutions. The National Geographic Society–Palomar Observatory Sky Atlas (POSS-I) was made by the California Institute of Technology with grants from the National Geographic Society. The Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II) was made by the California Institute of Technology with funds from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Sloan Foundation, the Samuel Oschin Foundation, and the Eastman Kodak Corporation. The Oschin Schmidt Telescope is operated by the California Institute of Technology and Palomar Observatory. Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the participating institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the participating institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration, including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, theMichigan State/ Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. Facilities: Kepler, MOST, FLWO:1.5m (CfA Digital Speedometer, TRES), TNG (HARPS-N), PO:1.5m (Robo-AO), PO:1.2m, Keck:II (NIRC2)

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