Kepler-1647b: the largest and longest-period Kepler transiting circumbinary planet

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of Kepler-1647b, the largest and longest-period transiting circumbinary planet, which challenges existing trends by orbiting a binary star at a long period and within the habitable zone.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed characterization of Kepler-1647b, a long-period, large-radius circumbinary planet with measurable mass and orbiting in the habitable zone.

Findings

Kepler-1647b has a radius of 1.06 Jupiter radii.

It has an orbital period of approximately 1100 days.

The planet's mass is measured at 1.52 Jupiter masses.

Abstract

We report the discovery of a new Kepler transiting circumbinary planet (CBP). This latest addition to the still-small family of CBPs defies the current trend of known short-period planets orbiting near the stability limit of binary stars. Unlike the previous discoveries, the planet revolving around the eclipsing binary system Kepler-1647 has a very long orbital period (~1100 days) and was at conjunction only twice during the Kepler mission lifetime. Due to the singular configuration of the system, Kepler-1647b is not only the longest-period transiting CBP at the time of writing, but also one of the longest-period transiting planets. With a radius of 1.06+/-0.01 RJup it is also the largest CBP to date. The planet produced three transits in the light-curve of Kepler-1647 (one of them during an eclipse, creating a syzygy) and measurably perturbed the times of the stellar eclipses, allowing us to measure its mass to be 1.52+/-0.65 MJup. The planet revolves around an 11-day period eclipsing binary consisting of two Solar-mass stars on a slightly inclined, mildly eccentric (e_bin = 0.16), spin-synchronized orbit. Despite having an orbital period three times longer than Earth's, Kepler-1647b is in the conservative habitable zone of the binary star throughout its orbit.