The Kepler-10 planetary system revisited by HARPS-N: a hot rocky world and a solid Neptune-mass planet

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Xavier Dumusque
  • Aldo S. Bonomo
  • Raphaelle D. Haywood
  • Luca Malavolta
  • Damien Segransan
  • Andrew Collier Cameron
  • David W. Latham
  • Emilio Molinari
  • Francesco Pepe
  • Stephane Udry
  • David Charbonneau
  • Rosario Cosentino
  • Courtney D. Dressing
  • Pedro Figueira
  • Aldo F. M. Fiorenzano
  • Sara Gettel
  • Avet Harutyunyan
  • Keith Horne
  • Mercedes Lopez-Morales
  • Christophe Lovis
  • Michel Mayor
  • Giusi Micela
  • Fatemeh Motalebi
  • Valerio Nascimbeni
  • David F. Phillips
  • Giampaolo Piotto
  • Don Pollacco
  • Didier Queloz
  • Ken Rice
  • Dimitar Sasselov
  • Alessandro Sozzetti
  • Andrew Szentgyorgyi
  • Chris Watson
Kepler-10b was the first rocky planet detected by the Kepler satellite and confirmed with radial velocity follow-up observations from Keck-HIRES. The mass of the planet was measured with a precision of around 30%, which was insufficient to constrain models of its internal structure and composition in detail. In addition to Kepler-10b, a second planet transiting the same star with a period of 45 days was statistically validated, but the radial velocities were only good enough to set an upper limit of 20 M for the mass of Kepler-10c. To improve the precision on the mass for planet b, the HARPS-N Collaboration decided to observe Kepler-10 intensively with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo on La Palma. In total, 148 high-quality radial-velocity measurements were obtained over two observing seasons. These new data allow us to improve the precision of the mass determination for Kepler-10b to 15%. With a mass of 3.33 ± 0.49 M and an updated radius of  R , Kepler-10b has a density of 5.8 ± 0.8 g cm–3, very close to the value predicted by models with the same internal structure and composition as the Earth. We were also able to determine a mass for the 45-day period planet Kepler-10c, with an even better precision of 11%. With a mass of 17.2 ± 1.9 M and radius of  R , Kepler-10c has a density of 7.1 ± 1.0 g cm–3. Kepler-10c appears to be the first strong evidence of a class of more massive solid planets with longer orbital periods.
Original languageEnglish
Article number154
JournalThe Astrophysical Journal
Volume789
Issue number2
Number of pages14
ISSN0004-637X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

ID: 140013880