A Planetary Mass Companion to the K0 Giant HD 17092

Abstract

We report the discovery of a substellar-mass companion to the K0-giant HD 17092 with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. In the absence of any correlation of the observed 360-day periodicity with the standard indicators of stellar activity, the observed radial velocity variations are most plausibly explained in terms of a Keplerian motion of a planetary-mass body around the star. With the estimated stellar mass of 2.3Msun, the minimum mass of the planet is 4.6MJ. The planet's orbit is characterized by a mild eccentricity of e=0.17 and a semi-major axis of 1.3 AU. This is the tenth published detection of a planetary companion around a red giant star. Such discoveries add to our understanding of planet formation around intermediate-mass stars and they provide dynamical information on the evolution of planetary systems around post-main sequence stars.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Ap