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The same frequency of planets inside and outside open clusters of stars

Nature volume 499, pages 55–58 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Most stars and their planets form in open clusters. Over 95 per cent of such clusters have stellar densities too low (less than a hundred stars per cubic parsec) to withstand internal and external dynamical stresses and fall apart within a few hundred million years1. Older open clusters have survived by virtue of being richer and denser in stars (1,000 to 10,000 per cubic parsec) when they formed. Such clusters represent a stellar environment very different from the birthplace of the Sun and other planet-hosting field stars. So far more than 800 planets have been found around Sun-like stars in the field2. The field planets are usually the size of Neptune or smaller3,4,5. In contrast, only four planets have been found orbiting stars in open clusters6,7,8, all with masses similar to or greater than that of Jupiter. Here we report observations of the transits of two Sun-like stars by planets smaller than Neptune in the billion-year-old open cluster NGC6811. This demonstrates that small planets can form and survive in a dense cluster environment, and implies that the frequency and properties of planets in open clusters are consistent with those of planets around field stars in the Galaxy.

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Figure 1: The colour–magnitude and colour–period diagrams for NGC6811.
Figure 2: Transit light curves.
Figure 3: Distribution of planetary properties.

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Acknowledgements

Kepler was competitively selected as the tenth Discovery mission. Funding for this mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. S.M. acknowledges support through NASA grant NNX09AH18A (The Kepler Cluster Study) and from the Kepler mission via NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC2-1390. G.T. acknowledges support through NASA’s Kepler Participating Scientist Program grant NNX12AC75G. L.A.R. acknowledges NASA support through Hubble Fellowship grant HF-51313.01-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Søren Meibom, Guillermo Torres, Francois Fressin & David W. Latham

  2. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, 94035, California, USA

    Jason F. Rowe, Steven T. Bryson, Christopher E. Henze & Steve B. Howell

  3. NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    David R. Ciardi

  4. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Leslie A. Rogers

  5. Boston University, Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, USA

    Kenneth Janes

  6. Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam 14467, Germany,

    Sydney A. Barnes

  7. Space Science Institute, Boulder, 80301, Colorado, USA

    Sydney A. Barnes

  8. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Geoffrey W. Marcy & Howard Isaacson

  9. Yale University, New Haven, 06520, Connecticut, USA

    Debra A. Fischer

  10. Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, 06515, Connecticut, USA

    Elliott P. Horch

  11. SETI Institute/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, 94035, California, USA

    Jon M. Jenkins

  12. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, 85719, Arizona, USA

    Simon C. Schuler

  13. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, 46556, Indiana, USA

    Justin Crepp

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  1. Søren Meibom
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Contributions

S.M. is the Principal Investigator of The Kepler Cluster Study and led the writing of the paper and the effort to identify members of NGC6811. He worked with G.T. and F.F. on characterization and validation of Kepler-66b and Kepler-67b, and with K.J. and S.A.B. on determination of the properties of NGC6811. G.T. developed the BLENDER software used to validate the planets, and determined the stellar properties of the host stars. F.F. worked on the BLENDER validation of the two planets and the Monte-Carlo simulation of the cluster yield. D.W.L. contributed follow-up spectroscopy of host stars. J.F.R. performed the light-curve analysis to extract the planet characteristics. D.R.C. provided constraints on angular separation of potential background blends from adaptive optics imaging. S.T.B. performed pixel-level centroid analysis. C.E.H. assisted in running BLENDER on the NASA Pleiades supercomputer. L.A.R. modelled the planets’ interior structure to constrain the range of possible masses and compositions. K.J. led the supporting photometric study from which the bulk properties of NGC6811 are derived. S.A.B. participated in the acquisition of ground-based spectroscopic and photometric data on NGC6811. G.W.M. and H.I. obtained and analysed high-resolution Keck HIRES spectra of the host stars used for the BLENDER analysis. D.A.F. analysed HIRES spectra using the Spectroscopy Made Easy software. S.B.H. and E.P.H. obtained and analysed speckle observations of the host stars. J.M.J. led the efforts of data collection, data processing and data review that yielded the Kepler time series photometry. S.C.S. did spectroscopic analysis of stellar members of NGC6811 to aid in the determination of cluster parameters including metallicity. J.C. obtained adaptive optics imaging observations.

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Correspondence to Søren Meibom.

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Meibom, S., Torres, G., Fressin, F. et al. The same frequency of planets inside and outside open clusters of stars. Nature 499, 55–58 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12279

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