HD 83443 - Planetary System

Planetary System

The planet HD 83443 b was discovered in 2000 by the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search Team led by Michel Mayor. It has a minimum mass comparable to Saturn's, and its orbit is one of the shortest known, 1/25th that of Earth's. It takes only three days to complete one revolution around the star. This hot Jupiter is likely to be slightly larger than Jupiter in radius.

In 2000, the same year that planet b was found, another planet around HD 83443 was announced by the Geneva Team. The new planet was designated as "HD 83443 c". It had a mass smaller than planet b and a short, very eccentric orbit. Its orbital period, 28.9 days, was especially interesting, because it indicated a 10:1 orbital resonance between the planets. However, a team led by astronomer Paul Butler did not detect any signal indicating the existence of the second planet. New observations by the Geneva team could not detect the signal either and the discovery claim had to be retracted. The origin of the signal, which was "highly significant" in the earlier data is not yet clear.

The HD 83443 system
Companion
Mass Semimajor axis
Orbital period
Eccentricity Radius
b >0.38 MJ 0.039 2.98565 ± 0.00003 0.013 ± 0.013

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