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Evidence for an additional planet in the β Pictoris system

Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages 1135–1142 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

With its imaged debris disk of dust, its evaporating exocomets, and an imaged giant planet, the young (~23 Myr) β Pictoris system is a unique proxy for detailed studies of planet formation processes as well as planet–disk interactions. Here, we study ten years of European Southern Observatory/High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) high-resolution spectroscopic data of β Pictoris. After removing the radial velocity (RV) signals arising from the δ Scuti pulsations of the star, a ~1,200-d periodic signal remains, which, within our current knowledge, we can only attribute to a second planet in the system. The β Pic c mass is about nine times the mass of Jupiter; it orbits at ~2.7 au on an eccentric (e ~ 0.24) orbit. More RV data are needed to obtain more precise estimates of the properties of β Pic c. The current modelling of the planet’s properties and the dynamic of the whole system has to be reinvestigated in light of this detection.

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Fig. 1: RV variations of β Pictoris and generalized Lomb–Scargle periodograms.
Fig. 2: Pulsation-corrected RV data with corresponding generalized Lomb–Scargle periodogram.
Fig. 3: Keplerian fits of the pulsation-corrected RV data.
Fig. 4: Properties of the additional planet.

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Data availability

The HARPS spectra are available in the ESO archive, and the measured RV data are given in Supplementary Table 1.

Code availability

The codes used for this paper are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by grants from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-14-CE33–0018) and the French Labex OSUG@2020 (Investissements d’avenir—ANR10 LABX56). A.Z. was supported by CONICYT grant no. 2117053. A.-M.L. thanks F. Forbes, K. Zwincks, A. Lecavelier, J. Pepper, P. Kervella and J. C. B. Papaloizou for discussions. T.G., D.M., L.A. and F.-X.S. acknowledge support from Idex UCAJEDI (ANR-15-IDEX-01) and IPEV.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France

    A.-M. Lagrange, Nadège Meunier, Miriam Keppler, Franck Galland, Hervé Beust, Antoine Grandjean, Simon Borgniet, Mickael Bonnefoy & Laetitia Rodet

  2. Pixyl, La Tronche, France

    Pascal Rubini

  3. Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

    Miriam Keppler

  4. Université Côte d’Azur, OCA, Lagrange CNRS, Nice, France

    Eric Chapellier, Tristan Guillot, Djamel Mékarnia, Lyu Abe & François-Xavier Schmider

  5. LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, Meudon, France

    Eric Michel

  6. South African Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa

    Luis Balona

  7. CNRS, UMR7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Paris, France

    Paul Anthony Wilson & Flavien Kiefer

  8. Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Paul Anthony Wilson

  9. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    Paul Anthony Wilson

  10. European Southern Observatory, Vitacura, Santiago, Chile

    Jorge Lillo-Box, Blake Pantoja & Matias Jones

  11. Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile

    Blake Pantoja & Matias Diaz

  12. Instituto de Fisica y Astronomia, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile

    Daniela Paz Iglesias

  13. Núcleo Milenio de Formación Planetaria—NPF, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile

    Daniela Paz Iglesias

  14. Center of Astro-Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Abner Zapata

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  1. A.-M. Lagrange
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Contributions

A.-M.L. led the monitoring of the variations, the data reduction, the analysis and interpretation of the data, and the paper writing. N.M., P.R., M.K. and F.G. participated to the data fitting and analysis. E.C., E.M., L.B. and F.-X.S. brought their expertise in stellar variability. H.B. provided analysis of the dynamical stability of the system. T.G., D.M. and L.A. brought expertise on β Pictoris photometric variability. P.A.W. and F.K. brought expertise on β Pictoris spectroscopic variability. M.B., S.B., A.G., J.L.-B., B.P., D.P.I., L.R. and A.Z.S. participated in the observations.

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Correspondence to A.-M. Lagrange.

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Lagrange, AM., Meunier, N., Rubini, P. et al. Evidence for an additional planet in the β Pictoris system. Nat Astron 3, 1135–1142 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0857-1

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