* Astronomy

Title: A super-Earth orbiting the nearby M-dwarf GJ 536
Author: A. Suárez Mascareño, J. I. González Hernández, R. Rebolo, N. Astudillo-Defru, X. Bonfils, F. Bouchy, X. Delfosse, T. Forveille, C. Lovis, M. Mayor, F. Murgas, F. Pepe, N. C. Santos, S. Udry, A. Wünsche, S. Velasco

We report the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting the star GJ 536 based on the analysis of the radial-velocity time series from the HARPS and HARPS-N spectrographs. GJ 536 b is a planet with a minimum mass M sin i of 5.36 ± 0.69 Me with an orbital period of 8.7076 +- 0.0025 days at a distance of 0.066610(13) AU, and an orbit that is consistent with circular. The host star is the moderately quiet M1 V star GJ 536, located at 10 pc from the Sun. We find the presence of a second signal at 43 days that we relate to stellar rotation after analysing the time series of Ca II H&K and H alpha spectroscopic indicators and photometric data from the ASAS archive. We find no evidence linking the short period signal to any activity proxy. We also tentatively derived a stellar magnetic cycle of less than 3 years.

Read more (9515kb, PDF)