A Competitive Confirmation of KOI-1299b Through Radial Velocity Detection

KOI-1299 b: a massive planet in a highly eccentric orbit transiting a red giant

Authors:

Ciceri et al

Abstract:

We confirm the planetary nature of the Kepler object of interest KOI-1299 b. We accurately constrained its mass and eccentricity by high-precision radial velocity measurements obtained with the CAFE spectrograph at the CAHA 2.2-m telescope. By a simultaneous fit of these new data and Kepler photometry, we found that KOI-1299 b is a dense transiting exoplanet, having a mass of Mp = 4.87 +/- 0.48 MJup and radius of Rp = 1.120 +/- 0.036 RJup. The planet revolves around a K giant star, ascending the red giant branch, every 52.5 d, moving on a highly eccentric orbit with e = 0.535 +/- 0.030. By analysing two NIR high-resolution images, we found that a star occurs at 1.1 from KOI-1299, but it is too faint to cause significant effects on the transit depth. Together with Kepler-56 and Kepler-91, KOI-1299 occupies an almost-desert region of parameter space, which is important to constrain the evolutionary processes of planetary systems.