Detection of a transit of the super-Earth 55 Cancri e with warm Spitzer

We report on the detection of a transit of the super-Earth 55 Cnc e with warm Spitzer in IRAC's 4.5 μm band. Our MCMC analysis includes an extensive modeling of the systematic effects affecting warm Spitzer photometry, and yields a transit depth of 410 ± 63 ppm, which translates to a planetary radius of 2.08^+0.16_-0.17 R_oplus as measured in IRAC 4.5 μm channel. A planetary mass of 7.81_-0.53^+0.58 M_oplus is derived from an extensive set of radial-velocity data, yielding a mean planetary density of 4.78_-1.20^+1.31 g cm^-3. Thanks to the brightness of its host star (V = 6, K = 4), 55 Cnc e is a unique target for the thorough characterization of a super-Earth orbiting around a solar-type star.

The photometric time series used in this work are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/533/A114