arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 1410.0002astro-ph.EP
收藏

哈勃Space Telescope在GJ 436系统中寻找一颗次地球大小的系外行星

A Hubble Space Telescope Search for a Sub-Earth-Sized Exoplanet in the GJ 436 System

Kevin B. Stevenson, Jacob L. Bean, Daniel Fabrycky, Laura Kreidberg

摘要:

探测到围绕附近恒星运行的小行星是识别地球双胞胎的重要一步。在之前使用斯皮策太空望远镜的工作中,我们发现了证据,支持至少有一颗次地球大小的系外行星围绕附近的中M矮星GJ 436运行。作为后续行动,在这里,我们使用哈勃太空望远镜来调查这些候选行星之一UCF-1.01的存在,通过搜索它在其宿主恒星前面经过时的两个过境信号。数据的解释关键在于正确建模和从光变曲线中删除WFC 3仪器系统。在以前的HST工作的基础上,我们证明了WFC 3分析需要探索使用二次函数来拟合长时间依赖于访问的系统。这对于建立所有凌日系统白光曲线的绝对凌日和日食深度非常重要。本文提出的工作通过使用线性趋势对UCF-1.01的主凌日进行脉冲探测来证实这一点。然而,使用二次趋势,我们实现了更好地拟合白光曲线和减少的过境深度,这与以前的斯皮策测量不一致。此外,有或没有过境模型组件的二次趋势产生可比的拟合可用数据。使用GJ 436 b的现存WFC 3过境光变曲线,我们通过在多个时期实现光子限制模型拟合残差和一致的过境深度来进一步验证二次模型分量。我们的结论是,当我们拟合二次趋势时,我们的新数据与根据斯皮策数据假设的大小,周期和星历表围绕GJ 436运行的亚地球大小的行星的预测相矛盾,误差为3.1σ。

英文摘要:

The detection of small planets orbiting nearby stars is an important step towards the identification of Earth twins. In previous work using the Spitzer Space Telescope, we found evidence to support at least one sub-Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting the nearby mid-M dwarf star GJ 436. As a follow up, here we used the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate the existence of one of these candidate planets, UCF-1.01, by searching for two transit signals as it passed in front of its host star. Interpretation of the data hinges critically on correctly modeling and removing the WFC3 instrument systematics from the light curves. Building on previous HST work, we demonstrate that WFC3 analyses need to explore the use of a quadratic function to fit a visit-long time-dependent systematic. This is important for establishing absolute transit and eclipse depths in the white light curves of all transiting systems. The work presented here exemplifies this point by putatively detecting the primary transit of UCF-1.01 with the use of a linear trend. However, using a quadratic trend, we achieve a better fit to the white light curves and a reduced transit depth that is inconsistent with previous Spitzer measurements. Furthermore, quadratic trends with or without a transit model component produce comparable fits to the available data. Using extant WFC3 transit light curves for GJ436b, we further validate the quadratic model component by achieving photon-limited model fit residuals and consistent transit depths over multiple epochs. We conclude that, when we fit for a quadratic trend, our new data contradict the prediction of a sub-Earth-sized planet orbiting GJ 436 with the size, period, and ephemeris posited from the Spitzer data by a margin of 3.1σ.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

↑