Confirming Fundamental Parameters of the Exoplanet Host Star epsilon Eridani Using the Navy Optical Interferometer

Abstract

We measured the angular diameter of the exoplanet host star epsilon Eridani using the Navy Optical Interferometer. We determined its physical radius, effective temperature, and mass by combining our measurement with the star's parallax, photometry from the literature, and the Yonsei-Yale isochrones (Yi et al. 2001), respectively. We used the resulting stellar mass of 0.82 +/- 0.05 M_Sun plus the mass function from Benedict et al. (2006) to calculate the planet's mass, which is 1.53 +/- 0.22 M_Jupiter. Using our new effective temperature, we also estimated the extent of the habitable zone for the system.