* Astronomy

Title: KELT-3b: A Hot Jupiter Transiting a V=9.8 Late-F Star
Authors: Joshua Pepper (1), Robert J. Siverd (1), Thomas G. Beatty (2), B. Scott Gaudi (2), Keivan G. Stassun (1,3), Jason Eastman (4,5), Karen Collins (6), David W. Latham (7), Allyson Bieryla (7), Lars A. Buchhave (8,9), Eric L. N. Jensen (10), Mark Manner (11), Kaloyan Penev (12), Justin R. Crepp (13), Phillip A. Cargile (1), Saurav Dhital (1,14), Michael L. Calkins (7), Gilbert A. Esquerdo (7), Perry Berlind (7), Benjamin J. Fulton (4,15), Rachel Street (4), Qingqing Mao (1), Alexander J. W. Richert (16), Andrew Gould (2,17), Darren L. DePoy (18), John F. Kielkopf (6), Jennifer L. Marshall (18), Richard W. Pogge (2,17), Robert P. Stefanik (7), Mark Trueblood (19), Patricia Trueblood (19)

We report the discovery of KELT-3b, a moderately inflated transiting hot Jupiter with a mass of 1.462 (+0.067, -0.066) Jupiter masses, and radius of 1.358 (+0.068, -0.069) Jupiter radii, with an orbital period of 2.703390 ± 0.000010 days. The host star, KELT-3, is a V=9.8 late F star with M_* = 1.282 (+0.062, -0.060) solar masses, R_* = 1.482 (+0.062, -0.064) solar radii, T_eff = 6304 ± 49 K, log(g) = 4.204 (+0.031, -0.029), and [Fe/H] = 0.048 (+0.079, -0.081), and has a likely proper motion companion. KELT-3b is the third transiting exoplanet discovered by the KELT survey, and is orbiting one of the 20 brightest known transiting planet host stars, making it a promising candidate for detailed characterization studies. Although we infer that KELT-3 is significantly evolved, a preliminary analysis of the stellar and orbital evolution of the system suggests that the planet has likely always received a level of incident flux above the empirically-identified threshold for radius inflation suggested by Demory & Seager (2011).

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