Saturday, July 2, 2016

A Cold Planet near the Galactic Center


Han et al. (2016) present the discovery of a giant planet in orbit around a low-mass red dwarf star based on data acquired by two surveys which detected a gravitational microlensing event identified as OGLE-2015-BLG-0051/KMT-2015-BLG-0048. Models indicate the planet has ~0.72 times the mass of Jupiter and its projected separation from its host star is 0.73 ± 0.08 AU. At that distance, the planet is beyond the snow-line of its host star. The planet's host star is a low-mass red dwarf star with roughly one-tenth the mass of the Sun, and it is estimated to be ~26700 light years away, near the center of the galaxy.

Reference:
Han et al. (2016), "OGLE-2015-BLG-0051/KMT-2015-BLG-0048Lb: a Giant Planet Orbiting a Low-mass Bulge Star Discovered by High-cadence Microlensing Surveys", arXiv:1606.09352 [astro-ph.EP]