A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit

Arvind F Gupta^{1

2

3}, Sarah C Millholland^{4

5}, Haedam Im^{4

5}, Jiayin Dong⁶, Jonathan M Jackson⁷, Ilaria Carleo^{8

9}, Jessica Libby-Roberts^{10

11}, Megan Delamer^{10

11}, Mark R Giovinazzi¹², Andrea S J Lin^{10

11}, Shubham Kanodia¹³, Xian-Yu Wang¹⁴, Keivan Stassun¹⁵, Thomas Masseron^{8

9}, Diana Dragomir¹⁶, Suvrath Mahadevan^{10

11}, Jason Wright^{10

11

17}, Jaime A Alvarado-Montes^{18

19}, Chad Bender²⁰, Cullen H Blake¹², Douglas Caldwell²¹, Caleb I Cañas²², William D Cochran^{23

24}, Paul Dalba²⁵, Mark E Everett²⁶, Pipa Fernandez²⁶, Eli Golub²⁶, Bruno Guillet, Samuel Halverson²⁷, Leslie Hebb^{28

29}, Jesus Higuera²⁶, Chelsea X Huang³⁰, Jessica Klusmeyer²⁶, Rachel Knight, Liouba Leroux, Sarah E Logsdon²⁶, Margaret Loose, Michael W McElwain²², Andrew Monson²⁰, Joe P Ninan³¹, Grzegorz Nowak^{8

9

32}, Enric Palle^{8

9}, Yatrik Patel²⁶, Joshua Pepper³³, Michael Primm, Jayadev Rajagopal²⁶, Paul Robertson³⁴, Arpita Roy³⁵, Donald P Schneider^{10

11}, Christian Schwab^{18

19}, Heidi Schweiker²⁶, Lauren Sgro²¹, Masao Shimizu, Georges Simard, Guðmundur Stefánsson^{36

37}, Daniel J Stevens³⁸, Steven Villanueva²², John Wisniewski³⁹, Stefan Will, Carl Ziegler⁴⁰

Affiliations

¹ U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF NOIRLab), Tucson, AZ, USA. arvind.gupta@noirlab.edu.
² Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. arvind.gupta@noirlab.edu.
³ Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. arvind.gupta@noirlab.edu.
⁴ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA.
⁷ Van Vleck Observatory, Astronomy Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA.
⁸ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
⁹ Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
¹⁰ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹¹ Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
¹³ Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
¹⁷ Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁸ School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁹ The Macquarie University Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre, Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia.
²⁰ Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²¹ Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA.
²² NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
²³ Center for Planetary Systems Habitability, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁴ McDonald Observatory, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁵ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
²⁶ U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF NOIRLab), Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁷ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
²⁸ Physics Department, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA.
²⁹ Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
³⁰ Centre for Astrophysics, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.
³¹ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India.
³² Institute of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland.
³³ Department of Physics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA.
³⁴ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
³⁵ Schmidt Sciences, New York, NY, USA.
³⁶ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
³⁷ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
³⁸ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA.
³⁹ NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, USA.
⁴⁰ Department of Physics, Engineering & Astronomy, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, USA.

PMID: 39020171
PMCID: PMC11291287
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07688-3

A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit

Arvind F Gupta et al. Nature. 2024 Aug.

. 2024 Aug;632(8023):50-54.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07688-3. Epub 2024 Jul 17.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF NOIRLab), Tucson, AZ, USA. arvind.gupta@noirlab.edu.
² Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. arvind.gupta@noirlab.edu.
³ Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. arvind.gupta@noirlab.edu.
⁴ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA.
⁷ Van Vleck Observatory, Astronomy Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA.
⁸ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
⁹ Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
¹⁰ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹¹ Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
¹³ Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
¹⁷ Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁸ School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁹ The Macquarie University Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre, Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia.
²⁰ Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²¹ Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA.
²² NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
²³ Center for Planetary Systems Habitability, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁴ McDonald Observatory, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁵ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
²⁶ U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF NOIRLab), Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁷ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
²⁸ Physics Department, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA.
²⁹ Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
³⁰ Centre for Astrophysics, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.
³¹ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India.
³² Institute of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland.
³³ Department of Physics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA.
³⁴ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
³⁵ Schmidt Sciences, New York, NY, USA.
³⁶ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
³⁷ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
³⁸ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA.
³⁹ NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, USA.
⁴⁰ Department of Physics, Engineering & Astronomy, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, USA.

PMID: 39020171
PMCID: PMC11291287
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07688-3

Abstract

Giant exoplanets orbiting close to their host stars are unlikely to have formed in their present configurations¹. These 'hot Jupiter' planets are instead thought to have migrated inward from beyond the ice line and several viable migration channels have been proposed, including eccentricity excitation through angular-momentum exchange with a third body followed by tidally driven orbital circularization^2,3. The discovery of the extremely eccentric (e = 0.93) giant exoplanet HD 80606 b (ref. ⁴) provided observational evidence that hot Jupiters may have formed through this high-eccentricity tidal-migration pathway⁵. However, no similar hot-Jupiter progenitors have been found and simulations predict that one factor affecting the efficacy of this mechanism is exoplanet mass, as low-mass planets are more likely to be tidally disrupted during periastron passage^6-8. Here we present spectroscopic and photometric observations of TIC 241249530 b, a high-mass, transiting warm Jupiter with an extreme orbital eccentricity of e = 0.94. The orbit of TIC 241249530 b is consistent with a history of eccentricity oscillations and a future tidal circularization trajectory. Our analysis of the mass and eccentricity distributions of the transiting-warm-Jupiter population further reveals a correlation between high mass and high eccentricity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

**Fig. 1. TIC 241249530 b transit measurements.**
a, TESS photometric measurements (blue), shown at their native 30-min cadence, and the best-fit transit model (black curve) and 3σ confidence region (grey). b, Residuals to the best-fit model for the TESS transit detection. c, Diffuser-assisted ARCTIC photometric measurements (red) and the best-fit transit model (black curve) and 3σ confidence region (grey). We show both the raw 30-s cadence and binned 15-min cadence measurements, along with the residuals to the fitted transit signal. d, Residuals to the best-fit model for the ARCTIC transit detection. All brightnesses are given in parts per thousand (ppt). Error bars on individual data points indicate the 1σ measurement uncertainties. Source Data

**Fig. 2. Phase-folded RV measurements for TIC 241249530.**
a, RV measurements from NEID (blue), HPF (black), HARPS-N (yellow) and best-fit orbit model (black curve). b, Residuals to the RV orbit fit. c, Best-fit Rossiter–McLaughlin model (solid curve) and 1σ confidence region (grey), with the signal for aligned orbit shown for comparison (dashed curve). d, Residuals to the Rossiter–McLaughlin model fit. The dashed red box in a highlights the in-transit RV measurements, which are shown in b. Error bars on individual data points indicate the 1σ measurement uncertainties. Source Data

**Fig. 3. Mass–eccentricity distribution for transiting warm Jupiters.**
a, Best-fit beta distributions for transiting warm Jupiters more massive (red) and less massive (blue) than 1.935 M_J. The shaded regions represent the 1σ (darkest), 2σ and 3σ (lightest) posteriors on each fit. b, Masses and eccentricities of transiting warm Jupiters. The super-eccentric hot-Jupiter progenitors HD 80606 b and TIC 241249530 b are labelled with upright and inverted stars, respectively. The horizontal dashed line indicates the median mass of the population, which is the threshold used for the fits shown in a. Our results are insensitive to the exact value of the threshold (see Methods); the median is chosen simply for visualization purposes. Error bars on individual data points indicate the 1σ uncertainties from the literature. Source Data

**Extended Data Fig. 1. TESS light curves for TIC 241249530.**
a, Sector 20 TESS-SPOC data (30-min cadence). The vertical dashed line marks the best-fit transit midpoint. b, Sector 60 SPOC data (2-min cadence). Error bars on individual points represent 1σ measurement uncertainties.

**Extended Data Fig. 2. Reconstructed NESSI speckle images and 5σ contrast curves for TIC 241249530.**
Observations were taken simultaneously at 562 nm with the blue camera (upper-left inset image) and at 832 nm with the red camera (upper-right inset image). The contrast curves indicate the limiting magnitude difference at which bound or background sources could be detected for separations between 0.2″ and 1.2″.

**Extended Data Fig. 3. RV time series for TIC 241249530.**
a, RV measurements from NEID (blue), HPF (black) and HARPS-N (gold) and best-fit orbit model (black curve). b, Residuals to the RV orbit fit. Vertical red lines in both panels mark the predicted transit times. The grey-shaded region bounds the 3σ confidence intervals for the fit. The horizontal axis is in units of days relative to Barycentric Julian Date (BJD) 2457000. Error bars on individual points represent 1σ measurement uncertainties.

**Extended Data Fig. 4. SED for TIC 241249530.**
Red symbols represent the observed photometric measurements, for which the vertical error bars represent the 1σ measurement uncertainties and the horizontal bars represent the effective width of the passband. Blue symbols are the model fluxes from the best-fit PHOENIX atmosphere model (black). The Gaia spectrophotometry is represented as a grey swathe (see also inset plot).

**Extended Data Fig. 5. Constraints on the parameters of the first vZLK oscillation for TIC 241249530 b.**
a, Constraints on initial inclination. b, Constrains on initial maximum eccentricity. The red region (0 au < a_i < 4.2 au) indicates the absence of vZLK oscillations. The orange region (4.2 au < a_i < 7 au) indicates the presence of vZLK oscillations but with insufficient e_i,max to reach the present-day orbit owing to strong short-range forces (primarily GR, with further contributions from tides and rotational distortions). The blue region (a_i > 7 au) indicates the presence of vZLK oscillations that can drive the planet to reach present-day parameters.

**Extended Data Fig. 6. Simulated evolution of the orbit of TIC 241249530 b resulting from high-eccentricity migration driven by vZLK oscillations.**
a, Evolution of the eccentricity of the planetary orbit over time. b, Evolution of the mutual inclination between the planet and binary orbits over time. c, Evolution of the semimajor axis, a, and periastron separation, a(1 − e), of the planetary orbit over time. The vertical red lines at 3.2 Gyr mark the age at which the orbit reaches the present-day conditions (e = 0.94, a = 0.64 au). We adopt a_i = 10 au, e_i = 0.1 for the initial orbital parameters for illustrative purposes.

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References

1. Dawson, R. I. & Johnson, J. A. Origins of hot Jupiters. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys.56, 175–221 (2018).
1. Holman, M., Touma, J. & Tremaine, S. Chaotic variations in the eccentricity of the planet orbiting 16 Cygni B. Nature386, 254–256 (1997).
1. Fabrycky, D. & Tremaine, S. Shrinking binary and planetary orbits by Kozai cycles with tidal friction. Astrophys. J.669, 1298–1315 (2007).
1. Naef, D. et al. HD 80606 b, a planet on an extremely elongated orbit. Astron. Astrophys.375, L27–L30 (2001).
1. Wu, Y. & Murray, N. Planet migration and binary companions: the case of HD 80606b. Astrophys. J.589, 605–614 (2003).

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A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit

Affiliations

A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

References

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources