Gliese 876 C - Orbit and Mass

Orbit and Mass

Gliese 876 c is in a 1:2:4 Laplace resonance with the outer planets Gliese 876 b and Gliese 876 e: for every orbit of planet e, planet b completes two orbits and planet c completes four. This leads to strong gravitational interactions between the planets, causing the orbital elements to change rapidly as the orbits precess. This is the second known example of a Laplace resonance, the first being Jupiter's moons Io, Europa and Ganymede.

The orbital semimajor axis is only 0.13 AU, around a third of the average distance between Mercury and the Sun, and is more eccentric than the orbit of any of the major planets of our solar system. Despite this, it is located in the inner regions of the system's habitable zone, since Gliese 876 is such an intrinsically faint star.

A limitation of the radial velocity method used to detect Gliese 876 c is that only a lower limit on the planet's mass can be obtained. This is because the measured mass value depends on the inclination of the orbit, which is not determined by the radial velocity measurements. However in a resonant system such as Gliese 876, gravitational interactions between the planets can be used to determine the true masses. Using this method, the inclination of the orbit can be determined, revealing the planet's true mass to be 0.72 times that of Jupiter.