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A young massive planet in a star–disk system

Nature volume 451, pages 38–41 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

There is a general consensus that planets form within disks of dust and gas around newly born stars1,2. Details of their formation process, however, are still a matter of ongoing debate. The timescale of planet formation remains unclear, so the detection of planets around young stars with protoplanetary disks is potentially of great interest. Hitherto, no such planet has been found. Here we report the detection of a planet of mass (9.8±3.3)MJupiter around TW Hydrae (TW Hya), a nearby young star with an age of only 8–10 Myr that is surrounded by a well-studied circumstellar disk. It orbits the star with a period of 3.56 days at 0.04 au, inside the inner rim of the disk. This demonstrates that planets can form within 10 Myr, before the disk has been dissipated by stellar winds and radiation.

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Figure 1: A pictographic sketch of the TW Hya system.
Figure 2: Radial velocity variation of TW Hya.
Figure 3: Sine-fitting periodogram of RV variation.
Figure 4: Bisector analysis of line profile asymmetry.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the 2.2 m MPG/ESO La Silla team, especially P. Francois, B. Conn, M. Stefanon, O. Schütz, M. Morell and A. Gonzales for their help during the observations. We thank W. Herbst for constructive discussion and providing the supporting data.

Author Contributions The observations were carried out by J.S. and A.M.; T.H. and R.L. were responsible for the project planning. The data analysis was done by J.S., A.M., P.W. and M.K.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, D-69117, Germany ,

    J. Setiawan, Th. Henning, R. Launhardt, A. Müller, P. Weise & M. Kürster

Authors
  1. J. Setiawan
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  2. Th. Henning
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  3. R. Launhardt
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  4. A. Müller
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  5. P. Weise
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  6. M. Kürster
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to J. Setiawan or R. Launhardt.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains Supplementary Tables 1-3; Supplementary Figures 1-3 with Legends; Supplementary Discussion; Supplementary Notes; Supplementary Methods and additional references. (PDF 293 kb)

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Setiawan, J., Henning, T., Launhardt, R. et al. A young massive planet in a star–disk system. Nature 451, 38–41 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06426

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