A Prograde, Low-Inclination Orbit for the Very Hot Jupiter WASP-3b
arXiv:1004.0692 · doi:10.1088/0004-637X/715/1/421
Abstract
We present new spectroscopic and photometric observations of the transiting exoplanetary system WASP-3. Spectra obtained during two separate transits exhibit the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect and allow us to estimate the sky-projected angle between the planetary orbital axis and the stellar rotation axis, lambda = 3.3^{+2.5}_{-4.4} degrees. This alignment between the axes suggests that WASP-3b has a low orbital inclination relative to the equatorial plane of its parent star. During our first night of spectroscopic measurements, we observed an unexpected redshift briefly exceeding the expected sum of the orbital and RM velocities by 140 m/s. This anomaly could represent the occultation of material erupting from the stellar photosphere, although it is more likely to be an artifact caused by moonlight scattered into the spectrograph.
23 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, Replacement includes revised citations
References in corpus (15)
- The effect of red noise on planetary transit detection
- Prospects for the Characterization and Confirmation of Transiting Exoplanets via the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect
- On the tidal evolution of Hot Jupiters on inclined orbits
- WASP-3b: a strongly-irradiated transiting gas-giant planet
- The Transit Light Curve (TLC) Project. I. Four Consecutive Transits of the Exoplanet XO-1b
- Misaligned spin-orbit in the XO-3 planetary system?
- Analytic Approximations for Transit Light Curve Observables, Uncertainties, and Covariances
- On the Spin-Orbit Misalignment of the XO-3 Exoplanetary System
- The Transit Light Curve Project. III. Tres Transits of TrES-1
- Properties of analytic transit light curve models
- A Smaller Radius for the Transiting Exoplanet WASP-10b
- Measurement of the Spin-Orbit Angle of Exoplanet HAT-P-1b
- Updated parameters for the transiting exoplanet WASP-3b using RISE, a new fast camera for the Liverpool Telescope
- A cool starspot or a second transiting planet in the TrES-1 system?
- A Tentative Detection of a Starspot During Consecutive Transits of an Extrasolar Planet from the Ground: No Evidence of a Double Transiting Planet System Around TrES-1