Abstract
The Kepler spacecraft has been monitoring the light from 150,000 stars in its primary quest to detect transiting exoplanets. Here, we report on the detection of an eclipsing stellar hierarchical triple, identified in the Kepler photometry. KOI-126 [A, (B, C)], is composed of a low-mass binary [masses M B = 0.2413 ± 0.0030 solar mass (MFish eye), M C = 0.2127 ± 0.0026 MFish eye; radii RB = 0.2543 ± 0.0014 solar radius (RFish eye), RC = 0.2318 ± 0.0013 RFish eye; orbital period P1 = 1.76713 ± 0.00019 days] on an eccentric orbit about a third star (mass MA = 1.347 ± 0.032 MFish eye; radius RA = 2.0254 ± 0.0098 RFish eye; period of orbit around the low-mass binary P2 = 33.9214 ± 0.0013 days; eccentricity of that orbit e2 = 0.3043 ± 0.0024). The low-mass pair probe the poorly sampled fully convective stellar domain offering a crucial benchmark for theoretical stellar models.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 562-565 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Science |
Volume | 331 |
Issue number | 6017 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 4 2011 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General