Publication Date:
2012-01-13
Description:
Most Sun-like stars in the Galaxy reside in gravitationally bound pairs of stars (binaries). Although long anticipated, the existence of a 'circumbinary planet' orbiting such a pair of normal stars was not definitively established until the discovery of the planet transiting (that is, passing in front of) Kepler-16. Questions remained, however, about the prevalence of circumbinary planets and their range of orbital and physical properties. Here we report two additional transiting circumbinary planets: Kepler-34 (AB)b and Kepler-35 (AB)b, referred to here as Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, respectively. Each is a low-density gas-giant planet on an orbit closely aligned with that of its parent stars. Kepler-34 b orbits two Sun-like stars every 289 days, whereas Kepler-35 b orbits a pair of smaller stars (89% and 81% of the Sun's mass) every 131 days. The planets experience large multi-periodic variations in incident stellar radiation arising from the orbital motion of the stars. The observed rate of circumbinary planets in our sample implies that more than approximately 1% of close binary stars have giant planets in nearly coplanar orbits, yielding a Galactic population of at least several million.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Welsh, William F -- Orosz, Jerome A -- Carter, Joshua A -- Fabrycky, Daniel C -- Ford, Eric B -- Lissauer, Jack J -- Prsa, Andrej -- Quinn, Samuel N -- Ragozzine, Darin -- Short, Donald R -- Torres, Guillermo -- Winn, Joshua N -- Doyle, Laurance R -- Barclay, Thomas -- Batalha, Natalie -- Bloemen, Steven -- Brugamyer, Erik -- Buchhave, Lars A -- Caldwell, Caroline -- Caldwell, Douglas A -- Christiansen, Jessie L -- Ciardi, David R -- Cochran, William D -- Endl, Michael -- Fortney, Jonathan J -- Gautier, Thomas N 3rd -- Gilliland, Ronald L -- Haas, Michael R -- Hall, Jennifer R -- Holman, Matthew J -- Howard, Andrew W -- Howell, Steve B -- Isaacson, Howard -- Jenkins, Jon M -- Klaus, Todd C -- Latham, David W -- Li, Jie -- Marcy, Geoffrey W -- Mazeh, Tsevi -- Quintana, Elisa V -- Robertson, Paul -- Shporer, Avi -- Steffen, Jason H -- Windmiller, Gur -- Koch, David G -- Borucki, William J -- England -- Nature. 2012 Jan 11;481(7382):475-9. doi: 10.1038/nature10768.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Astronomy Department, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, California 92182, USA. wfw@sciences.sdsu.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22237021" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Extraterrestrial Environment/chemistry
;
*Planets
;
Space Flight
;
Spacecraft
;
Stars, Celestial
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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