A Mass for the Extrasolar Planet Gl 876b Determined from Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidan.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 2 1 2 1 0 1 v 1 4 D e c 2 0 0 2 to appear in Ap. J. Letters A Mass for the Extrasolar Planet Gl 876b Determined from Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidance Sensor 3 Astrometry and High-Precision Radial Velocities1 G. F. Benedict1, B. E. McArthur1, T. Forveille 2 ,3, X. Delfosse3, E. Nelan 4, R. P. Butler5, W. Spiesman1, G. Marcy6, B. Goldman8, C. Perrier3, W. H. Jefferys7, and M. Mayor9 ABSTRACT We report the first astrometrically determined mass of an extrasolar planet, a companion previously detected by Doppler spectroscopy. Radial velocities first provided an ephemeris with which to schedule a significant fraction of the HST observations near companion peri- and apastron. The astrometry residuals at these orbital phases exhibit a systematic deviation consistent with a perturba- tion due to a planetary mass companion. Combining HST astrometry with radial velocities, we solve for the proper motion, parallax, perturbation size, inclination, and position angle of the line of nodes, while constraining period, velocity ampli- tude, longitude of periastron, and eccentricity to values determined from radial 1McDonald Observatory, University of Texas, 1 University Station C1402, Austin, TX 78712, fritz @as- tro.as.utexas.edu, mca@astro.as.utexas.edu 2Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, P.O. Box 1597, Kamuela, HI 96743, forveill@cfht.hawaii.edu 3Observatoire de Grenoble, B.P. 53X, 38041 Grenoble Cedex, France, delfosse@obs.ujf- grenoble.fr,perrier@obs.ujf-grenoble.fr 4Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, nelan@stsci.edu 5Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, DC 20015, paul@dtm.ciw.edu 6Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, gmarcy@etoile.berkeley.edu 7Astronomy Dept., University of Texas, 1 University Station C1400, Austin, TX 78712, bill@astro.as.utexas.edu 8Departmen