Bibcode
Wright, Jason T.; Roy, Arpita; Mahadevan, Suvrath; Wang, Sharon X.; Ford, Eric B.; Payne, Matt; Lee, Brian L.; Wang, Ji; Crepp, Justin R.; Gaudi, B. Scott; Eastman, Jason; Pepper, Joshua; Ge, Jian; Fleming, Scott W.; Ghezzi, Luan; González-Hernández, J. I.; Cargile, Phillip; Stassun, Keivan G.; Wisniewski, John; Dutra-Ferreira, Leticia; Porto de Mello, Gustavo F.; Maia, Márcio A. G.; Nicolaci da Costa, Luiz; Ogando, Ricardo L. C.; Santiago, Basilio X.; Schneider, Donald P.; Hearty, Fred R.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 770, Issue 2, article id. 119, 21 pp. (2013).
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6
2013
Journal
Citations
28
Refereed citations
24
Description
We have analyzed new and previously published radial velocity (RV)
observations of MARVELS-1, known to have an ostensibly substellar
companion in a ~6 day orbit. We find significant (~100 m
s–1) residuals to the best-fit model for the companion,
and these residuals are naïvely consistent with an interior giant
planet with a P = 1.965 days in a nearly perfect 3:1 period
commensurability (|Pb /Pc – 3| <
10–4). We have performed several tests for the reality
of such a companion, including a dynamical analysis, a search for
photometric variability, and a hunt for contaminating stellar spectra.
We find many reasons to be critical of a planetary interpretation,
including the fact that most of the three-body dynamical solutions are
unstable. We find no evidence for transits, and no evidence of stellar
photometric variability. We have discovered two apparent companions to
MARVELS-1 with adaptive optics imaging at Keck; both are M dwarfs, one
is likely bound, and the other is likely a foreground object. We explore
false-alarm scenarios inspired by various curiosities in the data.
Ultimately, a line profile and bisector analysis lead us to conclude
that the ~100 m s–1 residuals are an artifact of
spectral contamination from a stellar companion contributing ~15%-30% of
the optical light in the system. We conclude that origin of this
contamination is the previously detected RV companion to MARVELS-1,
which is not, as previously reported, a brown dwarf, but in fact a G
dwarf in a face-on orbit.
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