Journal
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
Volume 520, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
EDP SCIENCES S A
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201014775
Keywords
planets and satellites: detection; stars: fundamental parameters; techniques: photometric; techniques: spectroscopic; techniques: radial velocities; planets and satellites: fundamental parameters
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Funding
- French National Research Agency [ANR-08-JCJC-0102-01]
- Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion [ESP2007-65480-C02-02]
- DLR [50OW0204, 50O0603, 50QP07011]
- Israeli Science Foundation [655/07]
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/G002266/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [ST/G002266/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Aims. We report the discovery of CoRoT-8b, a dense small Saturn-class exoplanet that orbits a K1 dwarf in 6.2 days, and we derive its orbital parameters, mass, and radius. Methods. We analyzed two complementary data sets: the photometric transit curve of CoRoT-8b as measured by CoRoT and the radial velocity curve of CoRoT-8 as measured by the HARPS spectrometer**. Results. We find that CoRoT-8b is on a circular orbit with a semi-major axis of 0.063 +/- 0.001 AU. It has a radius of 0.57 +/- 0.02 R-J, a mass of 0.22 +/- 0.03 M-J, and therefore a mean density of 1.6 +/- 0.1 g cm(-3). Conclusions. With 67% of the size of Saturn and 72% of its mass, CoRoT-8b has a density comparable to that of Neptune (1.76 g cm(-3)). We estimate its content in heavy elements to be 47-63 M-circle plus, and the mass of its hydrogen-helium envelope to be 7-23 M-circle plus. At 0.063 AU, the thermal loss of hydrogen of CoRoT-8b should be no more than similar to 0.1% over an assumed integrated lifetime of 3 Ga.
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