A planet within the debris disk around the pre-main-sequence star AU Microscopii
Barclay, Thomas; Vanderburg, Andrew; Hellier, Coel; Kruse, Ethan; Latham, David W.; Roberge, Aki; Foreman-Mackey, Daniel; Kane, Stephen R.; Pepper, Joshua; Youngblood, Allison; Wittenmyer, Robert A.; Schlieder, Joshua E.; Howard, Andrew W.; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Horner, Jonathan; Vanderspek, Roland; Seager, Sara; Winn, Joshua N.; Jenkins, Jon M.; Clampin, Mark; Teske, Johanna; Ciardi, David R.; Narita, Norio; Palle, Enric; Dragomir, Diana; Gagné, Jonathan; Feliz, Dax; Bowler, Brendan P.; Brown, Carolyn J.; Plavchan, Peter; Gao, Peter; Cale, Bryson; Giddens, Frank; Latouf, Natasha; Matzko, William; Tanner, Angelle; Tinney, C. G.; Quinn, Sam; Stassun, Keivan; Berardo, David A.; Tieu, Ben; Anglada-Escudé, Guillem; Ricker, George; Rinehart, Stephen; Krishnamurthy, Akshata; Dynes, Scott; Doty, John; Adams, Fred; Afanasev, Dennis A.; Beichman, Chas; Bottom, Mike; Brinkworth, Carolyn; Cancino, Andrew; Clark, Jake T.; Collins, Karen; Davison, Cassy; Furlan, Elise; Gaidos, Eric J.; Geneser, Claire; Gilbert, Emily; Hall, Ryan; Henry, Todd; Huang, Chelsea; Huber, Joseph; Kenworthy, Matthew; Kielkopf, John; Kipping, David; Klenke, Chris; Lowrance, Patrick; Mennesson, Bertrand; Mengel, Matthew; Mills, Sean M.; Morton, Tim; Newton, Elisabeth; Nishimoto, America; Okumura, Jack; Quintana, Elisa V.; Roccatagliata, Veronica; von Braun, Kaspar; Walp, Bernie; Wang, Jason; Wang, Sharon Xuesong; Weigand, Denise; White, Russel; Wright, Duncan J.; Zhang, Hui; Zilberman, Perri
United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Netherlands, Japan, Spain, Italy, China
Abstract
AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is the second closest pre-main-sequence star, at a distance of 9.79 parsecs and with an age of 22 million years1. AU Mic possesses a relatively rare2 and spatially resolved3 edge-on debris disk extending from about 35 to 210 astronomical units from the star4, and with clumps exhibiting non-Keplerian motion5-7. Detection of newly formed planets around such a star is challenged by the presence of spots, plage, flares and other manifestations of magnetic `activity' on the star8,9. Here we report observations of a planet transiting AU Mic. The transiting planet, AU Mic b, has an orbital period of 8.46 days, an orbital distance of 0.07 astronomical units, a radius of 0.4 Jupiter radii, and a mass of less than 0.18 Jupiter masses at 3σ confidence. Our observations of a planet co-existing with a debris disk offer the opportunity to test the predictions of current models of planet formation and evolution.