Planet Designations
The established convention for extrasolar planets is that the planets receive lower-case Roman letters starting from "b", in order of discovery. This system is used by the team led by Goździewski. On the other hand, the team led by Pepe have proposed a modification of the designation system, where the planets are designated in order of characterization. Since the parameters of the outermost planet were poorly constrained before the introduction of the 4-planet model of the system, this results in a different order of designations for the planets in the Mu Arae system. Both systems agree on the designation of the 640-day planet as "b". The old system designates the 9-day planet as "d", the 310-day planet as "e" and the outer planet as "c". Since the International Astronomical Union has not defined an official system for designations of extrasolar planets, the issue of which convention is "correct" remains open, however subsequent scientific publications about this system appear to have adopted the Pepe et al. system, as has the system's entry in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.
| Companion |
Mass | Semimajor axis |
Orbital period |
Eccentricity | Radius |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| c | >0.03321 MJ | 0.09094 | 9.6386 ± 0.0015 | 0.172 ± 0.04 | — |
| d | >0.5219 MJ | 0.921 | 310.55 ± 0.83 | 0.0666 ± 0.0122 | — |
| b | >1.676 MJ | 1.497 | 643.25 ± 0.90 | 0.128 ± 0.017 | — |
| e | >1.814 MJ | 5.235 | 4205.8 ± 758.9 | 0.0985 ± 0.0627 | — |
Read more about this topic: Mu Arae, Planetary System
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