HAT-P-7: New stellar and planetary companion

A Common Proper Motion Stellar Companion to HAT-P-7
http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.4422

Quote :

We report that HAT-P-7 has a common proper motion stellar companion. The companion is located at $\sim3.9$ arcsec to the east and estimated as an M5.5V dwarf based on its colors. We also confirm the presence of the third companion, which was first reported by Winn et al. (2009), based on long-term radial velocity measurements. We revisit the migration mechanism of HAT-P-7b given the presence of those companions, and propose sequential Kozai migration as a likely scenario in this system. This scenario may explain the reason for an outlier in the discussion of the spin-orbit alignment timescale for HAT-P-7b by Albrecht et al. (2012).

In addition one from yesterday:

Stellar companions to exoplanet host stars: Lucky Imaging of transiting planet hosts
http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.4087

Confirmation of binary companions to TrES-4 and WASP-2, and new candidate stellar companions at HAT-P-8 and WASP-12

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/news/winds_of_rubies/

Winds of rubies and sapphires strike the sky of giant planet

- Weather detected on HAT-P-7b – a planet 16x larger than Earth, over 1000 light years away
- First ever gas giant outside our solar system to reveal weather patterns
- Clouds on planet could be made of corundum, the mineral which forms rubies and sapphires
- Kepler satellite measured changes in the light reflected from planet


The paper, ‘Variability in the Atmosphere of the Hot Jupiter HAT-P-7’, is published in the first issue of Nature Astronomy.

Regarding the first weather detection: It's useful to remember HD 80606 b.

Paper is now on arXiv.

Variability in the Atmosphere of the Hot Giant Planet HAT-P-7 b
https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.04225