MOA-2009-BLG-387Lb: a massive planet orbiting an M dwarf

Abstract

Aims. We report the discovery of a planet with a high planet-to-star mass ratio in the microlensing event MOA-2009-BLG-387, which exhibited pronounced deviations over a 12-day interval, one of the longest for any planetary event. The host is an M dwarf, with a mass in the range 0.07 M⊙ < Mhost < 0.49 M⊙ at 90% confidence. The planet-star mass ratio q = 0.0132 ± 0.003 has been measured extremely well, so at the best-estimated host mass, the planet mass is mp = 2.6 Jupiter masses for the median host mass, M = 0.19 M⊙.