Tag Archives: hot stars

Discovery of the hot Jupiter WASP-167b (KELT-13b)

The websites sci-news.com and phys.org have published articles on our recent discovery of WASP-167b (KELT-13b) — the highest WASP number so far announced — along with an image comparing it to Jupiter:

WASP-167b is notable for two reasons. First, it orbits a hot star with a surface temperature of 7000 Kelvin. Planets transiting hot stars are harder to validate since the star’s spectra shows only broad and weak spectral lines, which makes it harder to get accurate radial-velocity measurements and thus prove that the transiting object has the right mass to be a planet.

The WASP project had tended to put such candidates on the back-burner and go after easier targets, but having succeeded in finding over 100 planets transiting cooler stars we are now focussing on the hot ones.

Secondly, WASP-167b is a joint discovery with the KELT project (hence the additional name of KELT-13b), the first time two of the transit-search teams have combined an announcement. Both projects had put much effort and telescope time into following up this candidate, and a joint paper recognises both of these campaigns.