The researchers from Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences of Ankara University discovered two planets around Kepler-451, a binary star system with a distance of 1336 light years from Earth.

The research carried out by Res. Asst. Ekrem Murat ESMER, Assoc. Prof. Özgür BAŞTÜRK, Prof. Selim Osman SELAM from Ankara University, and Asst. Prof. Sinan ALİŞ from Istanbul University, and is the second discovery of exoplanets from Turkish scientists.

The team used Ankara University Kreiken Observatory’s “Prof. Dr. Berahitdin Albayrak” telescope, TÜBİTAK National Observatory’s T100 telescope and Istanbul University Observatory’s IST60 telescope for photometrical observations, along with the observations from Kepler and TESS space telescopes. The team analyzed the variation on the timings of the eclipse event of the binary star, and detected two planets around the binary along with another planet detected previously. The inner one of the newly discovered planets is 1.76 Jupiter mass planet with 43 days orbital period, while the outermost one is 1.61 Jupiter mass planet with 1800 days orbital period.

Kepler-451 system, one of the binary star systems studied within the scope of Ekrem Murat ESMER’s doctoral thesis, consists of a subdwarf star with a surface temperature of approximately 29300 oC and a dwarf star with a surface temperature of 2580 oC. Discoveries of planets were made using the changes in the time of eclipses seen in this system. In the study, it was determined that this system, which contains three planets in total, has a stable orbital configuration. These planets are the 21st and 22nd planets discovered with eclipse timing variation method. Also, Kepler-451 became the second binary star system after Kepler-47 to have more than two planets discovered around it.

The study was supported by a TUBITAK 1001 R&D project titled “Exoplanet Discovery with the Timing Technique” (118F042) directed by Assoc. Prof. Özgür BAŞTÜRK. The scientific article describing the discovery of planets in the Kepler-451 system was published in the “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”, from Oxford University Press.

 

To access the article:

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac357

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.02118