We provide evidence that the obliquities of stars with close-in giant planets were initially nearly random, and that the low obliquities that are often observed are a consequence of star-planet tidal interactions. The evidence is based on 14 new measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect (for the systems HAT-P-6, HAT-P-7, HAT-P-16, HAT-P-24, HAT-P-32, HAT-P-34, WASP-12, WASP-16, WASP-18, WASP-19, WASP-26, WASP-31, Gl 436, and Kepler-8), as well as a critical review of previous observations. The low-obliquity (well-aligned) systems are those for which the expected tidal timescale is short, and likewise the high-obliquity (misaligned and retrograde) systems are those for which the expected timescale is long. At face value, this finding indicates that the origin of hot Jupiters involves dynamical interactions like planet-planet interactions or the Kozai effect that tilt their orbits rather than inspiraling due to interaction with a protoplanetary disk. We discuss the status of this hypothesis and the observations that are needed for a more definitive conclusion.

We report high-resolution spectroscopic detection of TiO molecular signature in the day-side spectra of WASP-33 b, the second hottest known hot Jupiter. We used High-Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS; R ∼ 165,000) in the wavelength range of 0.62 -0.88 µm with the Subaru telescope to obtain the day-side spectra of WASP-33 b. We suppress and correct the systematic effects of the instrument, the telluric and stellar lines by using SYSREM algorithm after the selection of good orders based on Barnard star and other M-type stars. We detect a 4.8-σ signal at an orbital velocity of K p = +237.5 −1 , which agree with the derived values from the previous analysis of primary transit. Our detection with the temperature inversion model implies the existence of stratosphere in its atmosphere, however, we were unable to constrain the volume-mixing ratio of the detected TiO. We also measure the stellar radial velocity and use it to obtain a more stringent constraint on the orbital velocity, K p = 239.0Our results demonstrate that high-dispersion spectroscopy is a powerful tool to characterize the atmosphere of an exoplanet, even in the optical wavelength range, and show a promising potential in using and developing similar techniques with high-dispersion spectrograph on current 10m-class and future extremely large telescopes.

We present the discovery of a transiting exoplanet candidate in the K2 Field-1 with an orbital period of 9.1457 hr: K2-22b. The highly variable transit depths, ranging from ∼0% to 1.3%, are suggestive of a planet that is disintegrating via the emission of dusty effluents. We characterize the host star as an M-dwarf with T eff ; 3800 K. We have obtained ground-based transit measurements with several 1-m class telescopes and with the GTC. These observations (1) improve the transit ephemeris; (2) confirm the variable nature of the transit depths; (3) indicate variations in the transit shapes; and (4) demonstrate clearly that at least on one occasion the transit depths were significantly wavelength dependent. The latter three effects tend to indicate extinction of starlight by dust rather than by any combination of solid bodies. The K2 observations yield a folded light curve with lower time resolution but with substantially better statistical precision compared with the ground-based observations. We detect a significant "bump" just after the transit egress, and a less significant bump just prior to transit ingress. We interpret these bumps in the context of a planet that is not only likely streaming a dust tail behind it, but also has a more prominent leading dust trail that precedes it. This effect is modeled in terms of dust grains that can escape to beyond the planetʼs Hill sphere and effectively undergo "Roche lobe overflow," even though the planetʼs surface is likely underfilling its Roche lobe by a factor of 2.

We present an improved formula for the anomalous radial velocity of the star during planetary transits due to the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect. The improvement comes from a more realistic description of the stellar absorption line profiles, taking into account stellar rotation, macroturbulence, thermal broadening, pressure broadening, and instrumental broadening. Although the formula is derived for the case in which radial velocities are measured by cross-correlation, we show through numerical simulations that the formula accurately describes the cases where the radial velocities are measured with the iodine absorption-cell technique. The formula relies on prior knowledge of the parameters describing macroturbulence, instrumental broadening and other broadening mechanisms, but even 30% errors in those parameters do not significantly change the results in typical circumstances. We show that the new analytic formula agrees with previous ones that had been computed on a case-by-case basis via numerical simulations. Finally, as one application of the new formula, we reassess the impact of the differential rotation on the RM velocity anomaly. We show that differential rotation of a rapidly rotating star may have a significant impact on future RM observations.

We obtain analytical expressions for the velocity anomaly due to the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, for the case when the anomalous radial velocity is obtained by cross-correlation with a stellar template spectrum. In the limit of vanishing width of the stellar absorption lines, our result reduces to the formula derived by Ohta et al. (2005), which is based on the first moment of distorted stellar lines. Our new formula contains a term dependent on the stellar linewidth, which becomes important when rotational line broadening is appreciable. We generate mock transit spectra for four existing exoplanetary systems (HD17156, TrES-2, TrES-4, and HD209458) following the procedure of Winn et al. (2005), and find that the new formula is in better agreement with the velocity anomaly extracted from the mock data. Thus, our result provides a more reliable analytical description of the velocity anomaly due to the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, and explains the previously observed dependence of the velocity anomaly on the stellar rotation velocity.

We present the first evidence of a retrograde orbit of the transiting exoplanet HAT-P-7b. The discovery is based on a measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect with the Subaru HDS during a transit of HAT-P-7b, which occurred on UT 2008 May 30.Our best-fit model shows that the spin-orbit alignment angle of this planet is λ = −132.6 • +10.5 • −16.3 • . The existence of such a retrograde planet have been predicted by recent planetary migration models considering planet-planet scattering processes or the Kozai migration. Our finding provides an important milestone that supports such dynamic migration theories.

We report a joint analysis of the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect with Subaru and the Kepler photometry for Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) 94 system. The system comprises four transiting planet candidates with orbital periods of 22.3 (KOI-94.01), 10.4 (KOI-94.02), 54.3 (KOI-94.03), and 3.7 (KOI-94.04) days from the Kepler photometry. We performed the radial velocity (RV) measurement of the system with the Subaru 8.2 m telescope on August 10, 2012 (UT), covering a complete transit of KOI-94.01 for ∼ 6.7 hours. The resulting RV variation due to the RM effect spectroscopically confirms that KOI-94.01 is indeed the transiting planet, and implies that its orbital axis is well aligned with the stellar spin axis; the projected spin-orbit angle λ is estimated as −6 +13 −11 deg. This is the first measurement of the RM effect for a multiple transiting system. Remarkably, the archived Kepler lightcurve around BJD=2455211.5 (date in UT January 14/15, 2010) indicates a "double transit" event of KOI-94.01 and KOI-94.03, in which the two planets transit the stellar disk simultaneously. Moreover, the two planets partially overlap each other, and exhibit a "planet-planet eclipse" around the transit center. This provides a rare opportunity to put tight constraints on the configuration of the two transiting planets by joint analysis with our Subaru RM measurement. Indeed, we find that the projected mutual inclination of KOI-94.01 and KOI-94.03 is estimated to be δ = −1.15 • ± 0.55 • . Implications for the migration model of multiple planet systems are also discussed.

We present an investigation of spin-orbit angles for planetary system candidates reported by Kepler. By combining the rotational period P s inferred from the flux variation due to starspots and the projected rotational velocity V sin I s and stellar radius obtained by a high resolution spectroscopy, we attempt to estimate the inclination I s of the stellar spin axis with respect to the line-of-sight. For transiting planetary systems, in which planetary orbits are edge-on seen from us, the stellar inclination I s can be a useful indicator of a spin-orbit alignment/misalignment. We newly conducted spectroscopic observations with Subaru/HDS for 15 KOI systems, whose lightcurves show periodic flux variations. After detailed analyses of their lightcurves and spectra, it turned out that some of them are binaries, or the flux variations are too coherent to be caused by starspots, and consequently we could constrain stellar inclinations I s for eight systems. Among them, KOI-262 and 280 are in good agreement with I s = 90 • suggesting a spin-orbit alignment, while at least one system, KOI-261, shows a possible spin-orbit misalignment. We also obtain a small I s for KOI-1463, but the transiting companion seems to be a star rather than a planet. The results for 269, 367, and 974 are ambiguous, and can be explained with either misalignments or moderate differential rotation. Since our method can be applied to any system having starspots regardless of the planet size, future observations will allow for the expansion of the parameter space in which the spin-orbit relations are investigated.