Rossiter-McLaughlin observations of 55 Cnc e

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Mercedes Lopez-Morales
  • Amaury H. M. J. Triaud
  • Florian Rodler
  • Xavier Dumusque
  • Buchhave, Lars A.
  • Avet Harutyunyan
  • Sergio Hoyer
  • Roi Alonso
  • Michael Gillon
  • Nathan A. Kaib
  • David. W. Latham
  • Christophe Lovis
  • Francesco Pepe
  • Didier Queloz
  • Sean N. Raymond
  • Damien Segransan
  • Ingo P. Waldmann
  • Stephane Udry
We present Rossiter-McLaughlin observations of the transiting super-Earth 55 Cnc e collected during six transit events between 2012 January and 2013 November with HARPS and HARPS-N. We detect no radial velocity signal above 35 cm s–1 (3σ) and confine the stellar v sin i to 0.2 ± 0.5 km s–1. The star appears to be a very slow rotator, producing a very low amplitude Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. Given such a low amplitude, the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect of 55 Cnc e is undetected in our data, and any spin-orbit angle of the system remains possible. We also performed Doppler tomography and reach a similar conclusion. Our results offer a glimpse of the capacity of future instrumentation to study low amplitude Rossiter-McLaughlin effects produced by super-Earths.
Original languageEnglish
Article numberL31
JournalThe Astrophysical Journal Letters
Volume792
Issue number2
ISSN2041-8205
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

ID: 139969380