3/25/2013

Extrasolar planets

Astronomy 9601

1

Topics to be covered

• 12.1 Physics and sizes • 12.2 Detecting extrasolar planets • 12.3 Observations of exoplanets • 12.4 Exoplanet statistics • 12.5 Planets and Life

2

What is a planet? What is a ?

• The composition of Jupiter closely resembles that of the : who’s to say that Jupiter is not simply a “failed star” rather than a planet? • The discovery of low-mass binary would be interesting, but (perhaps) not as exciting as discovering new “true” planets. • Is there a natural boundary between planets and stars?

3

1 3/25/2013

Planets and brown dwarfs • A star of mass less than 8% “bump” due to short- of the Sun (80x Jupiter’s lived deuterium burning mass) will never grow hot Steady luminosity due to H burning enough in its core to fuse hydrogen • This is used as the boundary between true stars and very large gas planets • Object s b el ow thi s mass are called brown dwarfs • The boundary between BD and planet is more controversial – some argue it should be based on formation – other choose 0.013 solar masses=13 Mj as the boundary, as objects below this mass will never reach even deuterium fusion

4 Nelson et al., 1986, AJ, 311, 226

5

Pulsar planets • In 1992, Wolszczan and Frail announced the discovery of a multi‐

Artist’s conception of the planet planet planetary system around the orbiting pulsar PSR B1257+12 millisecond pulsar PSR 1257+12 (an earlier announcement had been retracted). • These were the first two extrasolar planets confirmed to be discovered, and thus the first multi‐planet extrasolar planetary system discovered, and the first pulsar planets discovered • However, these objects are not in planetary systems as we usually think of them 6

2 3/25/2013

Worlds Beyond Our Sun

• In 1995 a team of Swiss astronomers discovered the first planet (in a non- pulsar system) outside our , orbiting asuna sun-like star called 51 Pegasi. • Further discoveries bring the grand total of known extrasolar planets to 861 (as of March 2013) and counting.

Artist's rendition of the star 51 Pegasi and its planetary companion 51 Pegasi B. 7

Unseen Companions

• Curiously enough, most extrasolar planets remain unseen • They are usually detected by indirect means, though their effects on their parent This artist's concept shows the Neptune-sized extrasolar planet star. circling the star Gliese 436.

8

Obstacles to Direct Detection • Direct detection is the only way to tell what these planets are made of and whether there's water or oxygen in their atmospheres. • But most known exoplanets are impossible to see with current technology • Two reasons why: – known exoplanets are too dim • Jupiter, for example, is more than a billion times fainter than the Sun. However it could easily be seen at large distances except for… – known exoplanets orbit too close to their parent stars • most known exoplanets have orbits smaller than that of Mercury

"It's like trying to see a firefly next to a searchlight from across town."

9

3 3/25/2013

The “first confirmed” image of an exoplanet: GQ Lupi & Planetary Companion

21 Mj, 100 AU orbit. Imaged by ESO’s VLT, then HST and Subaru confirmed (early Apr 2005) 10

Detection methods:

• oldest method, used since 1943 • the wobble induced in the plane-of-sky motion of the star by planets is measured by accurately observing its position over time • 1 detection

11

Astrometry • STEPS (Stellar Planet Survey) detected periodic of VB 10, a nearby brown dwarf. • VB 10b is approximately 6 Jupiter masses, with a period of 9 months. • No sign of planet when examined with other techniques: busted!

12

4 3/25/2013

Astrometry:Difficulties

•Example: The Sun wobbles by about its diameter, mostly due to Jupiter. •At 30 light-, this woldprodceanould produce an apparent motion of less than 1 milliarcsecond. • Typical good ground- based observing conditions produce positions with accuracies below but around 1 arc- Apparent motion of Sun from 30 ly

second. 13

Detection methods: Pulsar planets

• Pulsar planets are planets that are found orbiting pulsars – Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. • Pulsar planets are discovered through radio pulsar timing measurements, to detect anomalies in the pulsation period. Any bodies orbiting the pulsar will cause regulhlar changes iitltiSilin its pulsation. Since pulsars normally rotate at near-constant speed, any changes can easily be detected with the help of precise timing measurements. • The first ever planets discovered around another star, were discovered around a pulsar in 1992 by Wolszczan and Frail around PSR 1257+12. Some uncertainty initially surrounded this due to an earlier retraction of a planet detection around PSR 1829-10 14

PSR 1257+12

• Pulsar located 2630 light years away • These were the first extrasolar planets ever discovered

• Pulsar mass 0.3 Msun, rotational period 0.0062 seconds

Mass (ME)a (AU) Period (days) e Firs t plltanet 0.020 0190.19 25.26 000.0 Second planet 4.3 0.36 66.54 0.02 Third planet 3.9 0.46 98.21 0.025

– possible small fourth object has an upper mass limit of 0.2 MPluto and an upper size of R < 1000km.

15

5 3/25/2013

5 of the 12 known pulsar planet systems

Pulsar planet Mass Orbit distance Orbit period PSR B1620-26 c 2.5 Jupiters 23 AU 100yr V391 Peg b 3.2 Jupiters 1.7 AU 1170 days PSR 1257+12 a 0.02 Earths 0.19 AU 25 days b 4.3 Earths 0.36 AU 66 days c 3.9 Earths 0.46 AU 98 days d 0.0004 Earths 2.7 AU 3.5 years QS Vir b 6.4 Jupiters 4.2 AU 7.9 years HW Vir b 19.2 Jupiters 16 years c 8.5 Jupiters 332 days

•Since neutron stars are formed after the violent death of massive stars (supernovae), it was not expected that planets could survive in such a system. •Its now thought that the planets are either the remnant cores of giant planets that were able to weather the supernova, or later accretion products of supernova debris. 16

Detection methods: Transits

• Planets observed at inclinations (measured with respect to the plane of the sky) near 90o will pass in front of (“transit”) their host stars, dimming the light of the star. This may be detectable by high-precision photometry. •Note that the planet is invisible, being unresolved, only the brightness variation in the star is seen.

17

The Observational Challenge

The fraction of stars expected to have transits is:

f = fs fMS fCEGP pt fs = fraction of stars that are single = 0.5 fMS = fraction of those on the = 0.5 fCEGP = fraction of those that have a close-in planet = 0.01 pt = fraction of those with an inclination to transit = 0.1

• Need to look at 4000 stars to find 1 that transits. • Need to sample often compared to transit duration. • Need 1% accuracy for a 3s detection of a 2 hour transit. • Need to look on sky for at least 1 .

Requires 1,000,000 15-minute samples with 1% accuracy to detect one transit.

18

6 3/25/2013

Transits

• Assuming – The whole planet passes in front of the star – And ignoring limb darkening of the star as negligible • Then the dep th o f the ecli pse is s imp ly the ra tio of the planetary and stellar disk areas: 2 2 Δf πR ⎛ R ⎞ f = light flux = p = ⎜ p ⎟ 2 ⎜ ⎟ f* πR* ⎝ R* ⎠ • We measure the change in brightness, and estimate the stellar radius from the spectral type

19

Transits

• Advantages – Easy. Can be done with small, cheap telescopes • WASP, STARE, numerous others – Possible to detect low mass planets, including “Earths”, especially from space (Kepler mission, launched Mar 2009) • Disadvantages – Probability of seeing a transit is low • Need to observe many stars simultaneously – Easy to confuse with binary/triple systems – Needs measurements for confirmation, masses • Has found 294 exoplanets in 238 systems so far (March 2013) 20

• OGLE-TR-10: Konacki et al. 2004

• 0.57Mj, 1.24Rj, P=3.1days

21

7 3/25/2013

Kepler (transits)

With a total of 95 mega-pixels of CCDs Kepler is capable of observing over 100,000 stars all at once and measuring their brightness to an accuracy of better than 1 part in 100,000. 22

Kepler Orrery

23

Detection methods: microlensing

• If the geometry is correct, a planet can actually produce a brightening (rather than a dimming) of a background star (not the parent star) through gravitational microlensing.

24

8 3/25/2013

First detection: OGLE 2003 BLG-235

Analysis of the light curve reveals second object in lens with .4% of mass of the other

• 17,000 light years away, in the Sagittarius. • The planet, orbiting a red dwarf parent star, is most likely one-and-a-half times bigger than Jupiter. • The planet and star are three times farther apart than Earth and the Sun. • Together, they magnify a farther, background star some 24,000 light years away, near the Milky Way center. 25

Microlensing

• Microlensing has some disadvantages – model-dependent – only see the planet once • However, it is the “best” technique for finding smaller planets, farther from their star – ie. more Earth-like planets than RV technique (next) OGLE 2005-BLG-390 (Artist’s • 18 detections so far impression): Five Earth mass (Mar/2013) planet on a 10 yr orbit around a red dwarf star. First (probably) icy exoplanet found (25 Jan 2006) 26

Detection methods: radial velocity

• Most of the planets known to date were discovered using the “Doppler shift” or “radial velocity” method. • A planet's gravity pulls its host star back and forth during its orbit. This causes the light we receive to be "blueshifted" and "redshifted". • Although the Doppler signals are enough to convince us that extrasolar planets exist, these exoplanets are not seen directly. • (~502 detections as of March 2013)

27

9 3/25/2013

Stellar Doppler shifts Observe the period P GM r 3 = * P2 4π 2

Assume a circular orbit K (initially) to find planet velocity

Vp = GM* / r P

From conservation of momentum, determine Mp Assume a mass for the star (from spectral M p = M *V* /Vp type) to compute Mp sin i (K = V*sin i)

(i = inclination of orbital M p sin i = M *K /Vp plane to line of sight) 28

Eccentricity

• By looking more closely at the shape of the curve, the eccentricity of the planet’s orbit can be determined.

29

51 Pegasi b

• First planet discovered around a sun-like star outside of the solar system • Radial velocity method • Detection from regular velocity changes in the star's spectral lines of around70d 70 me tres per secon d • Semi-major axis 0.052 AU (circular) • Orbital period 4.23077 d • Mass >0.468 ± 0.007 MJ • Greater radius than Jupiter despite its lower mass • Superheated 700 K atmosphere • It is the prototypical ”hot Jupiter” • Orbital migration to present position? Artist’s conception 30

10 3/25/2013

Observational challenges • Requires high- precision repeatable spectroscopic measurements of Doppler shifts to ~ 1m/s accuracy • Most sensitive to massive planets near the star (“hot Jupiters”) 31

Direct Detection • To understand extrasolar planets, we really need their light • None of the radial velocity planets can be imaged with current technology – Plaaetstooatadtoocosetotenet is too faint and too close to the starsta • Solution: Remove the starlight (adaptive optics, coronagraphy, interferometry) • To optimize the contrast between Above: Gliese 229B – brown planet and star, one observes red dwarf companion to nearby M dwarfs, brown dwarfs & white dwarf dwarfs, and chooses a wavelength band that favours the planet 32

The Adaptive Optics Difference

• Images of the planet Neptune from the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii. Keck comprises two telescopes, each with a primary mirror 10 m in diameter. Support staff have recently installed an AO system on Keck II. • The left-hand image is what you normally see using Keck II. The right-hand image was taken after the AO system was turned on. 33

11 3/25/2013

Planet brightness vs age

•Gas giant planets are hotter when they form, and cool over time. •Hot Jupiters emit more strongly in the thermal IR than more distant gas giants. •Jupiter is 109 times fainter than the Sun in the visible, but only 106 times fainter in the thermal IR •Young Jupiters and hot Jupiters may be only 104 Solid lines Burrows 1997 models, dashed lines times fainter than their Burrows 2002 models stars in the IR Models assume evolution in isolation: no additional heating source or reflection component 34

The “first” image of an exoplanet • 2M1207 parent “star” is a brown dwarf – 10Myr old (young) – in an association of newly formed stars • Planet

– mass =5Mj • determined from model of spectrum of companion= uncertainty!

– radius = 1.5 Rj – 41 AU from the star • Chauvin et al. 2004, A&A, 425, L29 Imaged with NACO (an adaptive optics instrument) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) Sep 2004. Odd orbit means only confirmed after common proper motion confirmed (mid-Apr 2005) 35

The “first confirmed” image of an exoplanet: GQ Lupi & Planetary Companion

21 Mj, 100 AU orbit. Imaged by ESO’s VLT, then HST and Subaru confirmed (early Apr 2005) 36

12 3/25/2013

Caution! • AB Dor: nearby, young (~50 million years, 15pc) red dwarf • Brown dwarf companion • In this case, the mass could also be measured from direct observations of orbit over time • 2.5x more massive than spectral models predict (90 MJ vs 36 MJ) • So the planet is “just” a brown dwarf / • Masses measured by applying models to Close, Nature, 2005, 433, 286 , ages and distances may be under- estimated by > factor 2 37

Michael Perryman, 2012, Astrobiology 12, 928.

38

Scorecard (Mar. 13, 2013): 861

• Radial velocity: 501 planets in 389 systems • Transits: 294 planets in 238 systems. • Pulsar planets: 15 planets in 12 systems • Microlensing: 18 planets in 16 systems • Direct imaging: 32 planets in 28 systems • Astrometry: 1 planet Past scorecards Apr 7 2006: 194 • (SETI: nil) Mar 13 2008: 278 Nov 25 2009: 404

Nov 7 2011: 697 39

13 3/25/2013

Exotic systems: PSR B1620-26c

40

Exotic systems: HD 209458b

• Spectroscopic radial velocity studies first revealed the presence of a planet around HD 209458 on November 5, 1999 • 1.7% drop in HD 209458's brightness was measured, which was later confirmed as being due to a transit. Each transit lasts about three hours, and about 1.5% of the star's face is covered by the planet during the transit • Semi-major axis 0.045 AU (circular) • Orbital period 3.52474541d • Inclination 86.1 ±0.1° • Mass 0.69 ±0.05 MJ • Radius 1.32 ±0.05 RJ • Density 370 kg/m³ • Temperature 1,130 ±150 K • Probably a gas giant

Artist’s conception41

HD 209458b

„ Envelope of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen around the planet that reaches a temperature of 10,000 K „ The heavier carbon and oxygen atoms are being blown off of the planet by the extreme "hyyydrodynamic drag " created b y its evaporating hydrogen atmosphere „ The hydrogen tail streaming off of the planet is 200,000 kilometers long „ Measured by differential spectroscopy during transit by HST in UV (Vidal-Madjar et al 2004)

42

14 3/25/2013

Metallicity:

The abundance of elements heavier than He relative to the Sun

• Overall, ~5% of solar-like stars have radial velocity–detected Jupiters • But if we take into account: – >20% of stars with 3x the metal content of the Sun have planets – only ~3% of stars with 1/3rd of the Sun’s metallicity have planets

43

Orbit size distribution Max about 6 AU • Since most planets detected by RV, there are a lot of massive planets near their stars • This preponderance is a selection effect no doubt, but how do the ones we see form?

44

The problem: hot Jupiters

Possible solution: planetary migration • In our SS, the giant Additional problem: why do the planets stop their planets form far migration before falling into the star? from the Sun as the core-accretion model requires that they form a core (including a lot of ice) that reaches 10-20 Earth masses before they can accrete gas • However, many large exoplanets orbit very close to their star • This is perhaps the outstanding problem in the study of extrasolar planets.

45

15 3/25/2013

Mass distribution • Super-Jupiters (M>several MJup) are not common

• Implications for planet formation theories?

• Or only exist in numbers at large separation that haven’t yet been detected?

46

Cumming (2004) • Length of surveys limits distances planets have been found from stars. Normally one would like to observe a planet for at least one orbital period (for RV and transit methods) • Earliest surveys started 1989 Jupiter • Jupiter (5 AU from Sun) takes 12 yrs to orbit Sun – would only just have Lines are 50% and 99% been discovered detection thresholds for RV • Saturn takes 30 years surveys for 5 observations per - would possibly remain for 3, 6 and 12 yrs. undetected 47

Low-mass planets • Low-mass planets are not easily detected by RV technique. • Smallest (except for pulsar planets) is α Cen B b (radial v) at

0.00355 MJ ~

1.1 ME 48

16 3/25/2013

What about Earth-like planets? 49

Habitable zone

• For a planet to be Earth-like in the sense of having life, it likely must have a “moderate temperature” – liquid water – organic molecules stable – energy available • Ignoring geothermal heat, this likely means an appropriate distance from its parent star

„ The “appropriate” region (which may be as simply and vaguely defined as: “where liquid water can exist”) is called the “habitable zone” or HZ

50

Location of the Habitable Zone

• In practice the location of the Habitable Zone depends on the details of the planet itself, and possibly the planet’s recent history – an “ice ball” may be harder to warm up • By examining the Earth’s climate under different received solar fluxes,,(q the (liquid water) HZ stretches from about 0.95 to 1.4 AU • 0.99 to 1.7 AU: Kopparapu et al. (Feb 2013) Case Inner limit (AU) Outer limit (AU) Standard model 0.95 (0.99) 1.37 (1.70) Mars‐sized planet 0.98 (1.035) 1.49 (1.72) 10x Earth mass 0.91 (0.94) 1.29 (1.67) planet

Kasting et al 1993 (Kopparapu et al. 2013) 51

17 3/25/2013

Habitable zones around other stars

• Brighter stars have wider HZ’s further out, while low-mass stars have narrow HZ’s huddled near them. • This makes the HZ harder to hit for the (common) faint stars • High mass stars have shorter lifetimes: so their larger HZ’s might be counteracted by HZs for two different luminosity stars. the fact they die Stars between 0.7 and 1.5 solar before life can evolve? masses might live long enough for life to develop and have HZs far enough from the star. 52

Continuously Habitable Zone (CHZ) • Additionally, a star will typically increase in luminosity throughout its lifetime, moving the HZ. • If the zone moves too much, there is no “continously” habitable zone (CHZ)

Luminosity evolution of the Sun (Kasting et al 1993) 53

Habitable zones and biomarkers • Though many exoplanet systems are seen to contain “hot Jupiters” near their stars, they could contain as-yet undetected low-mass planets in their HZ – if they were not previously cleared out by migration • Some HJ’s that are within the HZ could harbour moons with more Earth-like properties. • So we find a planet with the same mass as Earth, and in the habitable zone: – How can we tell it harbours life? • Search for biomarkers – Water – Ozone – Albedo

54

18 3/25/2013

Earthshine spectrum with some features that might indicate life-bearing planets

The End

56

19