10/set/21 – Constraining the nature of the possible extrasolar PDS110b ring system (MSc Tiago Pinheiro, GDOP/UNESP)

The young star PDS110 in the Ori OB1a association underwent two similar eclipses covering a period of at least 25 days in 2008 and 2011. One plausible explanation for these events is the hypothesis that the star was eclipsed by an unseen giant planet (named PDS110b) circled by a ring system that fills a large fraction of its Hill sphere. Through thousands of numerical simulations of the three-body problem, we constrain the mass and eccentricity of this planet, as well the size and inclination of its ring, parameters that are not well determined just by the observational data. We carried out a broad range of different configurations for the PDS110b ring system and ruled out all that did not match with the observations. The result shows that the ring system could be even prograde and retrograde, but the preferred solution is that the ring probably has an inclination lower than 60°, radius between 0.1 and 0.2 au and that planet is more massive than 35 MJup with low eccentricity (< 0.05)