The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 40 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star
Open accessAbstract
A decade ago, the detection of the first transiting extrasolar planet provided a direct constraint on its composition and opened the door to spectroscopic investigations of extrasolar planetary atmospheres. Because such characterization studies are feasible only for transiting systems that are both nearby and for which the planet-to-star radius ratio is relatively large, nearby small stars have been surveyed intensively. Doppler studies and microlensing have uncovered a population of planets with minimum masses of 1.9-10 times the Earth's mass (M[symbol:see text]), called super-Earths. The first constraint on the bulk composition of this novel class of planets was afforded by CoRoT-7b (refs 8, 9), but the distance and size of its star preclude atmospheric studies in the foreseeable future. Here we report observations of the transiting planet GJ 1214b, which has a mass of 6.55M[symbol:see text]), and a radius 2.68 times Earth's radius (R[symbol:see text]), indicating that it is intermediate in stature between Earth and the ice giants of the Solar System. We find that the planetary mass and radius are consistent with a composition of primarily water enshrouded by a hydrogen-helium envelope that is only 0.05% of the mass of the planet. The atmosphere is probably escaping hydrodynamically, indicating that it has undergone significant evolution during its history. The star is small and only 13 parsecs away, so the planetary atmosphere is amenable to study with current observatories.
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“There are nine super-Earths with good determinations of both their radius and mass: GJ 1214 b (Charbonneau et al., 2009), 55 Cnc e (Gillon et al., 2012; Nelson et al., 2014), Kepler-36b (Carter et al., 2012), HD 97658 b (Dragomir et al., 2013), CoRoT-7b (Barros et al., 2014; Haywood et al., 2014), HIP 116454 b (Vanderburg et al., 2015), Kepler-78b (Howard et al., 2013; Pepe et al., 2013), and Ke”
From The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (2016) · cites this paper as Charbonneau et al., 2009
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Metadata
- Authors
- Charbonneau, D., Berta, Z. K., Irwin, J., Burke, C. J., Nutzman, P., Buchhave, L. A., Lovis, C., Bonfils, X., Latham, D. W., Udry, S., Murray-Clay, R. A., Holman, M. J., Falco, E. E., Winn, J. N., Queloz, D., Pepe, F., Mayor, M., Delfosse, X., & Forveille, T.
- Affiliations
- Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian (US)
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- University of Geneva (CH)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Charbonneau, David
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2009-12
- Volume
- 462
- Issue
- 7275
- Pages
- 891-894
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2127054216
- Cited by
- 797
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 51 · 2017: 46 · 2016: 50 · 2015: 52 · 2014: 70 · 2013: 87 · 2012: 87
- FWCI
- 44.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Instrumentation › Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Astro and Planetary Science
- Keywords
- super-Earths, GJ 1214b, transiting exoplanets, low-mass stars, planetary radius, planetary mass, water-rich planets, hydrogen/helium envelope, planetary composition, planetary atmospheres, M dwarfs, CoRoT-7b, ice giants, Earth analogs, transit timing variations, orbital eccentricity
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