Keck Observations Confirm a Super-Jupiter Planet Orbiting M-dwarf OGLE-2005-BLG-071L

TL;DR

Keck adaptive optics imaging confirmed a super-Jupiter planet orbiting an M-dwarf star through direct measurement of the host star's properties and proper motion, providing key data on such rare planetary systems.

Contribution

This study provides the first direct measurement of the host star and planet masses for OGLE-2005-BLG-071Lb using adaptive optics imaging, confirming the existence of a super-Jupiter orbiting an M-dwarf.

Findings

Confirmed the super-Jupiter planet orbiting an M-dwarf star.

Measured the host star mass as approximately 0.426 solar masses.

Determined the planet mass as approximately 3.27 Jupiter masses.

Abstract

We present adaptive optics imaging from the NIRC2 instrument on the Keck-2 telescope that resolves the exoplanet host (and lens) star as it separates from the brighter source star. These observations yield the $K$-band brightness of the lens and planetary host star, as well as the lens-source relative proper motion, $\mu_{\rm rel,H}$. in the heliocentric reference frame. The $\mu_{\rm rel,H}$ measurement allows determination of the microlensing parallax vector, $\pi_E$, which had only a single component determined by the microlensing light curve. The combined measurements of $\mu_{\rm rel,H}$ and $K_L$ provide the masses of the host stat, $M_{\rm host} = 0.426\pm 0.037 M_\odot$, and planet, $m_p = 3.27 \pm 0.32 M_{\rm Jup}$ with a projected separation of $3.4\pm 0.5\,$AU. This confirms the tentative conclusion of a previous paper (Dong et al. 2009) that this super-Jupiter mass planet, OGLE-2005-BLG-071Lb, orbits an M-dwarf. Such planets are predicted to be rare by the core accretion theory and have been difficult to find with other methods, but there are two such planets with firm mass measurements from microlensing, and an additional 11 planetary microlens events with host mass estimates $< 0.5M_\odot$ and planet mass estimates $> 2$ Jupiter masses that could be confirmed by high angular follow-up observations. We also point out that OGLE-2005-BLG-071L has separated far enough from its host star that it should be possible to measure the host star metallicity withspectra from a high angular resolution telescope such as Keck, the VLT, the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope.