In the Presence of a Wrecking Ball: Orbital Stability in the HR 5183 System
- Creators
- Kane, Stephen R.
- Blunt, Sarah
Abstract
Discoveries of exoplanets using the radial velocity method are progressively reaching out to increasingly longer orbital periods as the duration of surveys continues to climb. The improving sensitivity to potential Jupiter analogs is revealing a diversity of orbital architectures that are substantially different from that found in our solar system. An excellent example of this is the recent discovery of HR 5183b: a giant planet on a highly eccentric (e = 0.84) ~75 yr orbit. The presence of such giant planet orbits are intrinsically interesting from the perspective of the dynamical history of planetary systems, and also for examining the implications of ongoing dynamical stability and habitability of these systems. In this work, we examine the latter, providing results of dynamical simulations that explore the stable regions that the eccentric orbit of the HR 5183 giant planet allows to exist within the habitable zone (HZ) of the host star. Our results show that, despite the incredible perturbing influence of the giant planet, there remain a narrow range of locations within the HZ where terrestrial planets may reside in long-term stable orbits. We discuss the effects of the giant planet on the potential habitability of a stable terrestrial planet, including the modulation of terrestrial planet eccentricities and the periodically spectacular view of the giant planet from the terrestrial planet location.
Additional Information
© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2019 August 27; revised 2019 September 28; accepted 2019 October 7; published 2019 October 31. The authors would like to thank Paul Dalba and Michelle Hill for useful feedback on the manuscript. Thanks are also due to the referee, Ravi Kopparapu, for his insightful comments. S.B. is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, grant No. DGE1745303. This research has made use of the following archives: the Habitable Zone Gallery at hzgallery.org 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. The results reported herein benefited from collaborations and/or information exchange within NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) research coordination network sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Software: Mercury (Chambers 1999).Attached Files
Published - Kane_2019_AJ_158_209.pdf
Submitted - 1910.03626.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 99957
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20191120-112431148
- DGE-1745303
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Created
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2019-11-20Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field