Planet radii of Kepler Object of Interest Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Wolfgang A.
  2. Lopez E.
  3. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

The Kepler Mission has found thousands of planetary candidates with radii between 1 and 4R_{Earth}_. These planets have no analogues in our own solar system, providing an unprecedented opportunity to understand the range and distribution of planetary compositions allowed by planet formation and evolution. A precise mass measurement is usually required to constrain the possible composition of an individual super-Earth-sized planet, but these measurements are difficult and expensive to make for the majority of Kepler planet candidates (PCs). Fortunately, adopting a statistical approach helps us to address this question without them. In particular, we apply hierarchical Bayesian modeling to a subsample of Kepler PCs that is complete for P<25 days and R_pl_>1.2R_{Earth}_ and draw upon interior structure models that yield radii largely independent of mass by accounting for the thermal evolution of a gaseous envelope around a rocky core. Assuming the envelope is dominated by hydrogen and helium, we present the current-day composition distribution of the sub-Neptune-sized planet population and find that H+He envelopes are most likely to be ~1% of these planets' total masses with an intrinsic scatter of +/-0.5 dex. We address the gaseous/rocky transition and illustrate how our results do not result in a one-to-one relationship between mass and radius for this sub-Neptune population; accordingly, dynamical studies that wish to use Kepler data must adopt a probabilistic approach to accurately represent the range of possible masses at a given radius.

Keywords
  1. solar-system-planets
  2. stellar-radii
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2015ApJ...806..183W
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/806/183
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/806/183
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18060183

Access

Web browser access HTML
https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/806/183
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/806/183
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/806/183
IVOA Table Access TAP
https://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/806/183/table1?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/806/183/table1?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/806/183/table1?

History

2015-11-18T14:29:08Z
Resource record created
2015-11-18T14:29:08Z
Created
2018-01-04T08:21:52Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr