pith. sign in

arxiv: astro-ph/0612671 · v4 · submitted 2006-12-21 · 🌌 astro-ph

Planetary Radii across Five Orders of Magnitude in Mass and Stellar Insolation: Application to Transits

classification 🌌 astro-ph
keywords planetsradiimassesplanetarymassplanethydrogen-heliumirradiation
0
0 comments X
read the original abstract

To aid in the physical interpretation of planetary radii constrained through observations of transiting planets, or eventually direct detections, we compute model radii of pure hydrogen-helium, water, rock, and iron planets, along with various mixtures. Masses ranging from 0.01 Earth masses to 10 Jupiter masses at orbital distances of 0.02 to 10 AU are considered. For hydrogen-helium rich planets, our models are the first to couple planetary evolution to stellar irradiation over a wide range of orbital separations (0.02 to 10 AU) through a non-gray radiative-convective equilibrium atmosphere model. Stellar irradiation retards the contraction of giant planets, but its effect is not a simple function of the irradiation level: a planet at 1 AU contracts as slowly as a planet at 0.1 AU. For hydrogen-helium planets, we consider cores up to 90% of the total planet mass, comparable to those of Uranus and Neptune. If "hot Neptunes" have maintained their original masses and are not remnants of more massive planets, radii of 0.30-0.45 times Jupiter's radius are expected. Water planets are ~40-50% larger than rocky planets, independent of mass. Finally, we provide tables of planetary radii at various ages and compositions, and for ice-rock-iron planets we fit our results to analytic functions, which will allow for quick composition estimates, given masses and radii, or mass estimates, given only planetary radii. These results will assist in the interpretation of observations for both the current transiting planet surveys as well as upcoming space missions, including CoRoT and Kepler.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 8 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Coupling magma-ocean and atmospheres in spectral retrievals of sub-Neptunes

    astro-ph.EP 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    MELTYQ couples magma-atmosphere equilibrium models with spectral retrievals to constrain sub-Neptune magma oxidation states and volatile inventories from transmission spectra.

  2. JWST unveils a high mean molecular weight atmosphere for mini-Neptune TOI-1130b: Evidence for formation beyond the water ice line

    astro-ph.EP 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    The atmosphere of TOI-1130b shows high metallicity, low C/O, and elevated mean molecular weight consistent with ex-situ formation beyond the water ice line.

  3. A tidally detached super Neptune on a strongly misaligned retrograde orbit

    astro-ph.EP 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    TOI-1710 b has a true obliquity of 149 degrees indicating retrograde motion, favoring high-eccentricity migration via planet-planet scattering and Kozai-Lidov cycles for this tidally detached super-Neptune.

  4. TOI-159 b: an eccentric hot-Jupiter planet around a young, pulsating $\gamma$ Doradus star

    astro-ph.EP 2026-05 accept novelty 4.0

    TOI-159 b is confirmed as the hottest known eccentric hot Jupiter (e = 0.24) with a 13-sigma Keplerian detection around a young gamma Doradus star, including a preliminary low-resolution transmission spectrum.

  5. The Influences of Hydrogen-Silicate-Iron Miscibility on the Demographics of Sub-Neptunes and Super-Earths

    astro-ph.EP 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Variable hydrogen-silicate-iron miscibility coupled with atmospheric escape reproduces the occurrence density structure, radius gap, and radius-period relation of sub-Neptunes and super-Earths based on accreted hydrog...

  6. Direct Imaging Constraints on Binary Planets and Exomoons around Epsilon Indi A b

    astro-ph.EP 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    JWST/MIRI imaging of Eps Ind A b prefers a double-PSF model likely due to systematics but demonstrates sensitivity to exomoons down to 1.3 M_Jup at separations >2 AU and 2.5 M_Jup at 0.52 AU.

  7. Rapid and Predictive Planet Population Synthesis Model (RAPPS) I. Upgraded model and resulting synthetic populations

    astro-ph.EP 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    An upgraded planet population synthesis model incorporates post-disc dynamical evolution and atmospheric enrichment to generate synthetic exoplanet populations with improved fidelity to N-body results and observations.

  8. Machine Learning as a Transformative Tool for (Exo-)Planetary Science

    astro-ph.EP 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 2.0

    The paper reviews ML applications for sequence modeling, pattern recognition, and generative Bayesian analysis to tackle heterogeneous data challenges in (exo)planetary science.