A planet within the debris disk around the pre-main-sequence star AU Microscopii

Peter Plavchan, Thomas Barclay, Jonathan Gagné, Peter Gao, Bryson Cale, William Matzko, Diana Dragomir, Sam Quinn, Dax Feliz, Keivan Stassun, Ian J.M. Crossfield, David A. Berardo, David W. Latham, Ben Tieu, Guillem Anglada-Escudé, George Ricker, Roland Vanderspek, Sara Seager, Joshua N. Winn, Jon M. JenkinsStephen Rinehart, Akshata Krishnamurthy, Scott Dynes, John Doty, Fred Adams, Dennis A. Afanasev, Chas Beichman, Mike Bottom, Brendan P. Bowler, Carolyn Brinkworth, Carolyn J. Brown, Andrew Cancino, David R. Ciardi, Mark Clampin, Jake T. Clark, Karen Collins, Cassy Davison, Daniel Foreman-Mackey, Elise Furlan, Eric J. Gaidos, Claire Geneser, Frank Giddens, Emily Gilbert, Ryan Hall, Coel Hellier, Todd Henry, Jonathan Horner, Andrew W. Howard, Chelsea Huang, Joseph Huber, Stephen R. Kane, Matthew Kenworthy, John Kielkopf, David Kipping, Chris Klenke, Ethan Kruse, Natasha Latouf, Patrick Lowrance, Bertrand Mennesson, Matthew Mengel, Sean M. Mills, Tim Morton, Norio Narita, Elisabeth Newton, America Nishimoto, Jack Okumura, Enric Palle, Joshua Pepper, Elisa V. Quintana, Aki Roberge, Veronica Roccatagliata, Joshua E. Schlieder, Angelle Tanner, Johanna Teske, C. G. Tinney, Andrew Vanderburg, Kaspar von Braun, Bernie Walp, Jason Wang, Sharon Xuesong Wang, Denise Weigand, Russel White, Robert A. Wittenmyer, Duncan J. Wright, Allison Youngblood, Hui Zhang, Perri Zilberman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

129 Scopus citations

Abstract

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 years1. AU Mic possesses a relatively rare2 and spatially resolved3 edge-on debris disk extending from about 35 to 210 astronomical units from the star4, and with clumps exhibiting non-Keplerian motion5–7. 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 star8,9. 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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)497-500
Number of pages4
JournalNature
Volume582
Issue number7813
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 25 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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