55 Cancri F - Orbit and Mass

Orbit and Mass

55 Cancri f is located about 0.781 AU away from the star and takes 260 days to complete a full orbit. A limitation of the radial velocity method used to detect 55 Cancri f is that only a minimum mass can be obtained, in this case around 0.144 times that of Jupiter, or half the mass of Saturn. A Keplerian fit to the radial velocity data of 55 Cancri A indicates that the orbit is consistent with being circular, however changing the value in a range between 0 and 0.4 does not significantly alter the chi-squared statistic of the fit, thus a representative eccentricity of 0.2±0.2 was assumed. In a Newtonian model which takes interactions between the planets into account, the eccentricity comes out as 0.0002, almost perfectly circular.

Astrometric observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the outer planet 55 Cancri d is inclined at 53° with respect to the plane of the sky. The inner planets b and e are inclined at 85°. The inclination of f is unknown.

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