A multinational group of astronomers and astrophysicists has discovered a hot-Jupiter orbiting a rapidly rotating star 1,243 light-years from Earth.
A size comparison of Jupiter and WASP-167b (KELT-13b). Image credit: Keele University.
The newly discovered planet, named WASP-167b (or KELT-13b), is 1.6 times bigger than Jupiter and less than 8 times more massive.
The planet orbits its parent star, WASP-167, every 2.02 days and is much closer to the star than our planet is to the Sun.
Also known as 2MASS J13041053-3532582, WASP-167 is a 7,000 Kelvin, rapidly rotating F1V star.
The star is approximately 1.3 billion years old and is among the hottest stars known to host a transiting hot Jupiter; others include WASP-33, Kepler-13, KELT-17 and HAT-P-57.
In addition, it is one of the most rapidly rotating stars known to host a hot Jupiter, and one of the few with a stellar rotation period shorter than the planet’s orbit.
WASP-167b was jointly discovered by the WASP/KELT survey collaboration.
The WASP and the KELT exoplanet surveys observed WASP-167 between 2006 and 2013. A follow-up observation in 2016 at the European South Observatory confirmed the presence of the exoplanet.
“Planet-search teams are only just beginning to find hot-Jupiter planets with hot, fast-rotating host stars. This is only the second of what I hope will be many WASP planets that fall into this category,” said Keele University astrophysicist Lorna Temple.
“Already we are seeing characteristic properties that contrast those we’ve seen before, and I’m looking forward to filling in this emerging big picture with more new discoveries.”
“This is the first planet discovery where two teams have collaborated, pooling all of the data to produce the best possible characterization of the system.”
A paper reporting this discovery is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (arXiv.org preprint).
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L.Y. Temple et al. WASP-167b/KELT-13b: Joint discovery of a hot Jupiter transiting a rapidly-rotating F1V star. MNRAS, published online July 13, 2017; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stx1729
