CoRoT-Exo-3 b, Exo-4 b and Exo-5 b

[symaski62]

CoRoT-Exo-3 b
http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/ ... Exo-3&p2=b

CoroT-Exo-4 b
http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/ ... Exo-4&p2=b

CoroT-Exo-5 b
http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/ ... Exo-3&p2=b

update ...

[ajtribick]

Unfortunately we can't put these into Celestia (yet) since the host star details (RA, Dec, distance) have not been given yet.

However, CoRoT-Exo-3b seems to be a very odd object - 20.2 Jupiter masses but only 0.83 Jupiter radii, which seems quite small even when you account for gravitational compression (play around with the Brown Dwarf and Extra-Solar Giant Planet Calculator). A massive-core superplanet perhaps?

[symaski62]

[ajtribick]

ESA Press Release

In addition, an oddity dubbed ‘COROT-exo-3b’ has raised particular interest among astronomers. It appears to be something between a brown dwarf, a sub-stellar object without nuclear fusion at its core but with some stellar characteristics, and a planet. Its radius is too small for it to be a super-planet.

If it is a star, it would be among the smallest ever detected. Follow-up observations from the ground have pinned it at 20 Jupiter massses. This makes it twice as dense as the metal Platinum.

Scientists suspect that with the detection of COROT-exo-3b, they might just have discovered the missing link between stars and planets.

This kind of thing makes you wonder how many of the radial-velocity detected "planets", including ones at large distances from their stars, are also bizarre objects like these.

Plus...

COROT has also detected extremely faint signals that, if confirmed, could indicate the existence of another exoplanet, as small as 1.7 times Earth’s radius.

This is an encouraging sign in the delicate and difficult search for small, rocky exoplanets that COROT has been designed for.

[ajtribick]

Information about CoRoT-Exo-4 available on arXiv:
Transiting exoplanets from the CoRoT space mission IV: CoRoT-Exo-4b: A transiting planet in a 9.2 day synchronous orbit
Transiting exoplanets from the CoRoT space mission V. CoRoT-Exo-4b: Stellar and planetary parameters

The apparent synchronous orbit is quite interesting, particularly since this planet has one of the widest separations among currently-known transiting planets.

[Hungry4info]

On the 1.7 Earth-radii object. Here's the light curve:



You can find them here,
http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/may ... t.en.shtml

[ajtribick]

Paper about the transiting brown dwarf/superplanet CoRoT-Exo-3b is available on Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia here (pdf). The parameters have been revised and it no longer seems to be a "compact brown dwarf" or whatever...

As illustrated in Fig 10, CoRoT-Exo-3b parameters are in good agreement with the expected mass-radius relationship on the low-mass tail of these substellar objects.