4.7 Article

The planets around NN Serpentis: still there

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 437, Issue 1, Pages 475-488

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt1903

Keywords

binaries: close; binaries: eclipsing; planetary systems; white dwarfs

Funding

  1. UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) [ST/F002599/1]
  2. STFC
  3. Joint Committee ESO-Government of Chile
  4. Millenium Science Initiative, Chilean Ministry of Economy, Nucleus [P10-022-F]
  5. ALMA-CONICYT [31100025]
  6. Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/M002012/1, ST/I001719/1, ST/K002783/1, ST/F002599/1, ST/J001589/1] Funding Source: researchfish
  7. STFC [ST/I001719/1, ST/J001589/1, ST/M002012/1, ST/F002599/1, ST/G009465/1, ST/K002783/1] Funding Source: UKRI

Ask authors/readers for more resources

We present 25 new eclipse times of the white dwarf binary NN Ser taken with the high-speed camera ULTRACAM on the William Herschel Telescope and New Technology Telescope, the RISE camera on the Liverpool Telescope and HAWK-I on the Very Large Telescope to test the two-planet model proposed to explain variations in its eclipse times measured over the last 25 yr. The planetary model survives the test with flying colours, correctly predicting a progressive lag in eclipse times of 36 s that has set in since 2010 compared to the previous 8 yr of precise times. Allowing both orbits to be eccentric, we find orbital periods of 7.9 +/- 0.5 and 15.3 +/- 0.3 yr, and masses of 2.3 +/- 0.5 and 7.3 +/- 0.3M(J). We also find dynamically long-lived orbits consistent with the data, associated with 2: 1 and 5:2 period ratios. The data scatter by 0.07 s relative to the best-fitting model, by some margin the most precise of any of the proposed eclipsing compact object planet hosts. Despite the high precision, degeneracy in the orbit fits prevents a significant measurement of a period change of the binary and of N-body effects. Finally, we point out a major flaw with a previous dynamical stability analysis of NN Ser, and by extension, with a number of analyses of similar systems.

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