CaltechAUTHORS
Published December 10, 2006 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Measurement of the Spin-Orbit Alignment in the Exoplanetary System HD 189733

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 3. ROR icon Carnegie Institution for Science
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 5. ROR icon Tennessee State University
  • 6. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 7. ROR icon Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
  • 8. ROR icon University of Tokyo
  • 9. ROR icon Princeton University

Abstract

We present spectroscopy of a transit of the exoplanet HD 189733b. By modeling the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect (the anomalous Doppler shift due to the partial eclipse of the rotating stellar surface), we find the angle between the sky projections of the stellar spin axis and orbit normal to be λ = -1°.4 ± 1°.1. This is the third case of a "hot Jupiter" for which λ has been measured. In all three cases λ is small, ruling out random orientations with 99.96% confidence, and suggesting that the inward migration of hot Jupiters generally preserves spin-orbit alignment.

Additional Information

© 2006 American Astronomical Society. Received 2006 September 15; accepted 2006 November 1; published 2006 November 30. 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 NASA, and was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank Debra Fischer for running SME on our spectra and Scott Gaudi for very helpful discussions. We 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.

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Identifiers

Eprint ID
36506
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20130122-104241039

Dates

Created
2013-01-23
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Updated
2021-11-09
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