The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XVIII. An Earth-mass planet in the GJ 581 planetary system

The GJ 581 planetary system is already known to harbour three planets, including two super-Earth planets that straddle its habitable zone. We report the detection of an additional planet - GJ 581e - with a minimum mass of 1.9 M_⊕. With a period of 3.15 days, it is the innermost planet of the system and has a ~5% transit probability. We also correct our previous confusion about the orbital period of GJ 581d (the outermost planet) with a one-year alias, benefitting from an extended time span and many more measurements. The revised period is 66.8 days, and positions the semi-major axis inside the habitable zone of the low mass star. The dynamical stability of the 4-planet system imposes an upper bound on the orbital plane inclination. The planets cannot be more massive than approximately 1.6 times their minimum mass.

Based on observations made with the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6 m telescope under the GTO and LP programs 072.C-0488 and 183.C-0437 at Cerro La Silla (Chile). Our radial-velocity, photometric and Ca II H+K index time series (Table 1) are available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/507/487