Plavchan, Peter; Barclay, Thomas; Gagne, Jonathan; Gao, Peter; Cale, Bryson; Matzko, William; Dragomir, Diana; Quinn, Sam; Feliz, Dax; Stassun, Keivan; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Berardo, David A.; Latham, David W.; Tieu, Ben; Anglada-Escude, Guillem; Ricker, George; Vanderspek, Roland; Seager, Sara; Winn, Joshua N.; Jenkins, Jon M.; Rinehart, Stephen; Krishnamurthy, Akshata; Dynes, Scott; Doty, John; Adams, Fred; Afanasev, Dennis A.; Beichman, Chas; Bottom, Mike; Bowler, Brendan P.; Brinkworth, Carolyn; Brown, Carolyn J.; Cancino, Andrew; Ciardi, David R.; Clampin, Mark; Clark, Jake T.; Collins, Karen; Davison, Cassy; Foreman-Mackey, Daniel; Furlan, Elise; Gaidos, Eric J.; Geneser, Claire; Giddens, Frank; Gilbert, Emily; Hall, Ryan; Hellier, Coel; Henry, Todd; Horner, Jonathan; Howard, Andrew W.; Huang, Chelsea; Huber, Joseph; Kane, Stephen R.; Kenworthy, Matthew; Kielkopf, John; Kipping, David; Klenke, Chris; Kruse, Ethan; Latouf, Natasha; Lowrance, Patrick; Mennesson, Bertrand; Mengel, Matthew; Mills, Sean M.; Morton, Tim; Narita, Norio; Newton, Elisabeth; Nishimoto, America; Okumura, Jack; Palle, Enric; Pepper, Joshua; Quintana, Elisa V.; Roberge, Aki; Roccatagliata, Veronica; Schlieder, Joshua E.; Tanner, Angelle; Teske, Johanna; Tinney, C. G.; Vanderburg, Andrew; von Braun, Kaspar; Walp, Bernie; Wang, Jason; Wang, Sharon Xuesong; Weigand, Denise; White, Russel; Wittenmyer, Robert A.; Wright, Duncan J.; Youngblood, Allison; Zhang, Hui; Zilberman, Perri
2020
NATURE
DOI
10.1038/s41586-020-2400-z
AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is the second closest pre-main-sequence star, at a distance of 9.79 parsecs and with an age of 22 million years(1). AU Mic possesses a relatively rare(2) and spatially resolved(3) edge-on debris disk extending from about 35 to 210 astronomical units from the star(4), and with clumps exhibiting non-Keplerian motion(5-7). Detection of newly formed planets around such a star is challenged by the presence of spots, plage, flares and other manifestations of magnetic 'activity' on the star(8,9). Here we report observations of a planet transiting AU Mic. The transiting planet, AU Mic b, has an orbital period of 8.46 days, an orbital distance of 0.07 astronomical units, a radius of 0.4 Jupiter radii, and a mass of less than 0.18 Jupiter masses at 3 sigma confidence. Our observations of a planet co-existing with a debris disk offer the opportunity to test the predictions of current models of planet formation and evolution.