HD 89345: a bright oscillating star hosting a transiting warm Saturn-sized planet observed by K2

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and detailed characterization of HD 89345b, a warm Saturn-sized exoplanet orbiting a bright, slightly evolved star, using K2 photometry, asteroseismology, and radial velocity measurements.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed asteroseismic and radial velocity analysis of a bright star hosting a warm Saturn, revealing its stellar and planetary parameters and orbital characteristics.

Findings

The star has a mass of about 1.12 solar masses and is approximately 9.4 Gyr old.

The planet has a radius of about 6.86 Earth radii and a mass of 35.7 Earth masses.

The planet's orbit is eccentric with an eccentricity of approximately 0.2.

Abstract

We report the discovery and characterization of HD 89345b (K2-234b; EPIC 248777106b), a Saturn-sized planet orbiting a slightly evolved star. HD 89345 is a bright star ($V = 9.3$ mag) observed by the K2 mission with one-minute time sampling. It exhibits solar-like oscillations. We conducted asteroseismology to determine the parameters of the star, finding the mass and radius to be $1.12^{+0.04}_{-0.01}~M_\odot$ and $1.657^{+0.020}_{-0.004}~R_\odot$, respectively. The star appears to have recently left the main sequence, based on the inferred age, $9.4^{+0.4}_{-1.3}~\mathrm{Gyr}$, and the non-detection of mixed modes. The star hosts a "warm Saturn" ($P = 11.8$~days, $R_p = 6.86 \pm 0.14~R_\oplus$). Radial-velocity follow-up observations performed with the FIES, HARPS, and HARPS-N spectrographs show that the planet has a mass of $35.7 \pm 3.3~M_\oplus$. The data also show that the planet's orbit is eccentric ($e\approx 0.2$). An investigation of the rotational splitting of the oscillation frequencies of the star yields no conclusive evidence on the stellar inclination angle. We further obtained Rossiter-McLaughlin observations, which result in a broad posterior of the stellar obliquity. The planet seems to conform to the same patterns that have been observed for other sub-Saturns regarding planet mass and multiplicity, orbital eccentricity, and stellar metallicity.