Discovery of a young forming planet around the nearby star AU Mic

AU mic b light curves from TESS and Spitzer IRAC at 4.5 μm (purple filled circles). The transit model (orange curve) includes a photometric model that accounts for the stellar activity modelled with a Gaussian Process (GP), which is subtracted from the data before plotting. The frequent flares from the stellar surface are removed with an iterative sigma-clipping.
AU mic b light curves from TESS and Spitzer (purple circles). The transit model (orange curve) includes a photometric model that accounts for the stellar activity that is subtracted from the data. The frequent stellar surface flares are also removed.
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Authors
P. Plavchan et al.
Department of Physics and Astronomy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
References
2020 Nature 582 497

AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is the second closest pre-main-sequence star, at a distance of 9.79 parsecs and with an age of 22 million years. AU Mic possesses a relatively rare and spatially resolved edge-on debris disk extending from about 35 to 210 astronomical units from the star, and with clumps exhibiting non-Keplerian motion. Detection of newly formed planets around such a star is challenged by the presence of spots, plage, flares and other manifestations of magnetic ‘activity’ on the star. Here we report observations of a planet transiting AU Mic. The transiting planet, AU Mic b, has an orbital period of 8.46 days, an orbital distance of 0.07 astronomical units, a radius of 0.4 Jupiter radii, and a mass of less than 0.18 Jupiter masses at 3σ confidence. Our observations of a planet co-existing with a debris disk offer the opportunity to test the predictions of current models of planet formation and evolution.

News type
Research news
Scope
Science and Technology
Severo Ochoa
SO Research
Astrophysics
Undergraduate
Scientists
Exoplanetary Systems & Solar System (SEYSS)
SEVERO OCHOA

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