The Discovery of a Planetary Companion to 16 Cygni B

Abstract

High precision radial velocity observations of the solar-type star 16 Cygni B taken at McDonald Observatory and at Lick Observatory, have each independently discovered periodic radial-velocity variations indicating the presence of a Jovian-mass companion to this star. The orbital fit to the combined data gives a period of 800.8 days, a velocity amplitude of 43.9 m/s, and an eccentricity of 0.63. This is the largest eccentricity of any planetary system discovered so far. Assuming that 16 Cygni B has a mass of 1.0 Msun, this implies a mass for the companion of 1.5 sin i Jupiter masses. While the mass of this object is well within the range expected for planets, the large orbital eccentricity cannot be explained simply by the standard model of growth of planets in a protostellar disk. It is possible that this object was formed in the normal manner with a low eccentricity orbit, and has undergone post-formational orbital evolution, either through the same process which formed the ``massive eccentric'' planets around 70 Virginis and HD114762, or by gravitational interactions with the companion star 16 Cygni A. It is also possible that the object is an extremely low mass brown dwarf, formed through fragmentation of the collapsing protostar. We explore a possible connection between stellar photospheric Li depletion, pre-main sequence stellar rotation, the presence of a massive proto-planetary disk, and the formation of a planetary companion.