Characterizing the cool KOIs. VII. Refined physical properties of the transiting brown dwarf LHS 6343 C

Benjamin T. Montet, John Asher Johnson, Philip S. Muirhead, Ashley Villar, Corinne Vassallo, Christoph Baranec, Nicholas M. Law, Reed Riddle, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Andrew W. Howard, Howard Isaacson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present an updated analysis of LHS 6343, a triple system in the Kepler field which consists of a brown dwarf transiting one member of a widely separated M+M binary system. By analyzing the full Kepler data set and 34 Keck/HIgh Resolution Echelle Spectrometer radial velocity observations, we measure both the observed transit depth and Doppler semiamplitude to 0.5% precision. With Robo-AO and Palomar/PHARO adaptive optics imaging as well as TripleSpec spectroscopy, we measure a model-dependent mass for LHS 6343 C of 62.1 ± 1.2 M Jup and a radius of 0.783 ± 0.011 R Jup. We detect the secondary eclipse in the Kepler data at 3.5σ, measuring ecos ω = 0.0228 ± 0.0008. We also derive a method to measure the mass and radius of a star and transiting companion directly, without any direct reliance on stellar models. The mass and radius of both objects depend only on the orbital period, stellar density, reduced semimajor axis, Doppler semiamplitude, eccentricity, and inclination, as well as the knowledge that the primary star falls on the main sequence. With this method, we calculate a mass and radius for LHS 6343 C to a precision of 3% and 2%, respectively.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number134
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume800
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 20 2015

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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