Abstract for "New Detections of Planet-mass Companions to K-giants by the PTPS Survey," by Alex Wolszczan

Poster session at Exoplanets Rising: Astronomy and Planetary Science at the Crossroads

Quote :

We present discoveries of planet-mass companions to two K-giant
stars, HD 240237, and BD+20 274, by the ongoing Penn State - Torun
Planet Search (PTPS) conducted with the 9.2-m Hobby-Eberly Telescope
(HET) and the High Resolution Spectrometer (HRS; R=60,000). For the
estimated stellar masses of 0.85 M☉ for HD 240237 and 1.8 M☉
for BD+20 274, the corresponding minimum planet masses are 5.3 MJ and
5.5 MJ, respectively. The Keplerian orbits derived from model fits to
the radial velocity data are characterized by the respective semi-major
axes of 2 AU and 1.5 AU, eccentricities of 0.37 and 0.27, and orbital
periods of 740 days and 720 days. Our analysis of the growing
population of substellar –mass bodies orbiting giant stars strengthens
the existing evidence for a stellar mass – planet mass correlation, a
weak or non-existent correlation between stellar metallicity and planet
frequency, and the existence of a lower limit to the orbital radius,
which is currently constrained by the observations to be ≤0.6 AU.

Uhm, interesting find. Hoping it's not embargo breach.

A similar case is that for a couple of brown dwarfs around Iota Aurigae, shown in Extreme Solar System Meeting 2008. No discovery abstract so far. There is Extreme Solar System II to come, hoping to hear some news...

Edasich wrote:

Uhm, interesting find. Hoping it's not embargo breach.

Abstract publicly available on the web by following link and then there's a link to programme from there which contains abstract links