CoRoT-Exo-7b: Confirming the first transiting rocky planet

Details CoRoT-Exo-7b: Confirming the first transiting rocky planet CoRoT-Exo-7b: Confirming the first transiting rocky planet

Mar 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009sptz.prop..534f&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #534

Computer Science

Scientific paper

Earlier this month CoRoT announced the discovery of a periodic photometric signal compatible with a 1.76 REarth planet transiting a bright (V=11.7, K=9.8) K0V star. If confirmed, this planet would mark the beginning of a new era in exoplanetary science. Unlike Hot Jupiters, low mass planets may have a much larger variety of compositions, resembling anything from Earth analogs to mini-Neptunes. Transit observations allow us to estimate the planet's radius that is required to distinguish between these scenarios. In the past, transiting planet candidates have been confirmed by the detection of a radial velocity signal. Due to stellar activity, radial velocities from the HARPS spectrograph did not yield a clear measurement of the planetary mass. However the HARPS RVs do show a signal at the same period (0.853 days), compatible with a 2 to 9 Earth mass planet, although we can not entirely rule out an alternate scenario, in which the light curve results from the blended light of an eclipsing binary star system. The CoRoT team has pursued all possible ground-based follow-up observations, which have rejected most of these scenarios, and we have now reached the limits of what can be done with ground-based facilities. We propose to use Spitzer in channels 2 and 4 to rule out the few remaining cases. We show that the most likely remaining scenario would present an eclipse that is 2.5 times deeper in the Spitzer IRAC channel 2 than in the CoRoT bandpass. We propose to observe 4 transits of CoRoT-Exo-7 in order to obtain an independent detection at infrared wavelengths and to definitely rule out these blends scenarios. During the warm mission, Spitzer will carry out the same kinds of observations for Kepler candidates as part of program ES-60068. In fact CoRoT-Exo-7b (orbiting a bright K dwarf with a very short period) would be considered among the most promising for investigation if it were a Kepler target. The science case is so compelling and competitive that waiting for the next observability window in December 2009 could

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