NEWSNOTES S TA R S W I T H P L A N E TS I :
00 Lithium Spectral
Telltale Heavy Elements
With more than 60 extrasolar plan-
ets now safely in their catalogs, astrono-
mers are beginning to draw some statis-
tical conclusions about planetary
systems in general and the stars that host
them. One trend was spotted early. Stars
that have planets — at least the giant,
close-in planets that can be detected so
far — tend to be “metal rich.” That is,
the stars usually show above-average
proportions of elements heavier than
hydrogen and helium in their spectra.
(Astronomers call all such elements
“metals,” misleading though the term is,
for reasons rooted in the history of spec-
troscopy.) In fact, it’s hard to find a very
metal-rich solar-type star where a giant
planet has not turned up when a search
has been done. Exoplanet hunters in-
creasingly consider a heavy-element-rich
spectrum to be a red flag indicating a
star where they’re likely to score a hit.
A new study by three European as-
tronomers puts this relationship on a
firmer basis than ever. Nuno C. Santos
and Michel Mayor (Geneva Observatory)
and Garik Israelian (Astrophysics Insti-
tute of the Canary Islands) carried out a
high-precision spectroscopic analysis of
all 50 or so Sun-like stars within 60 light-
years that have been examined by the
European CORALIE planet-search pro-
gram. The astronomers found a clear,
smoothly rising trend: the more heavy el-
ements in a star’s atmosphere, the greater
the chance that it will have a giant planet
obvious enough to have been discovered.
Why does this relationship exist? Two
possibilities have been proposed. Maybe
you simply need metal-rich material to
have a good shot at making a planetary
system. After all, terrestrial planets are
balls of heavy elements, and (in conven-
Heavy Elements in
Nearby Stars
Relative number of stars
All stars
Stars with
planets
Sun
0.1 0.2 0.3
Iron/hydrogen ratio compared to Sun’s ratio
22 August 2001 Sky & Telescope
Relative brightness
tional planet-formation theory) even a
giant planet has to begin as a big terres-
trial planet before it can accrete the mas-
sive quantities of hydrogen and helium
that make it a giant.
An alternative is the “pollution” theory.
Maybe heavy elements are added later to a
planet-bearing star by some of the planets
falling in. This is not farfetched. Planets
are expected to spiral in while a star is
still surrounded by a massive proto-
planetary disk during the first few mil-
lion years of its life. Or they might fall in
later. Most of the exoplanets discovered
so far have rather eccentric (elongated)
orbits, which could be a sign that they
went through chaotic interactions with
other planets in ages past. These other
bodies would generally end up thrown
out of the system or into the star.
Santos and his colleagues say, howev-
er, that they can rule out infalling plan-
ets as the main source of their stars’
heavy elements. Their reasoning is based
on stellar structure. Stuff falling into a
star’s surface would get mixed with very
different amounts of a star’s bulk, de-
pending on the depth of the star’s “con-
vective zone” where mixing can occur.
(Material below the convective zone gen-
erally stays isolated from the surface.) A
cool, dim main-sequence star has a deep
convective zone that involves much of
the star’s bulk. A hotter, more massive
main-sequence star has a shallow, light-
weight convective zone. Planetary ma-
terial added to a hot star would remain
concentrated at the surface much more
strongly than the same amount added to
a cooler star. No such trend is seen.
Moreover, when a main-sequence star
starts to swell up as a subgiant its con-
vective zone deepens, and this would di-
lute any added heavy elements if they
were confined to near the surface. This
effect too is not seen.
Instead, write the authors, the reason
why planets tend to accompany metal-
rich stars is simply because “the higher
the metallicity of the star, the higher will
SOURCE: N. C. SANTOS ET AL.
be the probability that planet formation
will occur.” — A. M.
Stars known to have planets show more iron
and other heavy elements in their spectra
than stars generally. Apparently, planets form
1 2 3 4 5 most easily where heavy elements are richest
— but exceptions do exist.
©2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
1.
Line in
HD 82943
0.95
0.90
6
Li / 7Li = 0.12
6
Li / 7Li = 0.00
0.85
670.74 670.76 670.78 670.80 670.82
Wavelength (nanometers)
S TA R S W I T H P L A N E TS I I :
Swallowed Worlds
Even if most of a star’s heavy ele-
ments are primordial — matching the
interstellar cloud from which it was
born — a star does swallow some plan-
ets or asteroids after it has fully formed.
That, at least, is the claim by Norman
Murray and five colleagues in a paper
submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
They studied elemental abundances in
466 nearby solar-type stars and found
that, on average, these stars collected
about 0.4 Earth mass of iron after they
reached the main sequence.
Moreover, among stars that have
evolved off the main sequence and thus
gained a deep convective zone, this over-
abundance of iron disappears — just as
expected if it were limited to the stars’
surface layers due to infalls. “These find-
ings,” the astronomers write, “suggest
that terrestrial-type material is common
around solar-type stars.”
Compelling evidence that a particular
star has consumed a lot of planetary ma-
terial made headlines in May. The 6th-
magnitude G0 star HD 82943 in Hydra
was already known to have at least one
and probably two giant planets orbiting
it (July issue, page 24). The same as-
tronomers who authored the study relat-
ing a star’s heavy elements to planets
(see the previous article) found some-
thing extra special in this case: the star’s
atmosphere contains measurable traces
of the rare isotope lithium-6. Normally
all of this isotope is quickly consumed
by nuclear reactions during a star’s very
early youth, before its convective zone
becomes separated from the deep interi-
or. The only way lithium-6 could show
up in the star’s surface today, write the
astronomers in the May 10th Nature, is
if planetary material fell in later.
One or more giant planets totaling
about two Jupiter masses would do the
 S TA R S W I T H P L A N E TS I I I :

Clues from Planetary Nebulae

LYNETTE COOK; FAR LEFT: SOURCE: G. ISRAELIAN

Astronomers have an intriguing piece through a barrel-shaped object end-on, as
of evidence that virtually all moderate- described in the July 2000 issue, page 32).
and high-metallicity stars are orbited by Soker believes that a close-orbiting com-
something. They deduce this by per- panion star will shape a planetary nebula
forming a sort of autopsy on stars’ into an hourglass, a “butterfly” bipolar
bloated, gaseous remains. Noam Soker outflow, or an extreme ellipse; these ac-
(University of Haifa, Israel) claims that count for 40 to 50 percent of all plane-
the shape of the planetary nebula shed taries. Another 35 to 50 percent, he says,
by a dying star after its red-giant phase are shaped into more moderate ellipses
Left: Even for light elements, separating one reveals the size and nature of the star’s by substellar companions — from brown
isotope from another in a star’s spectrum is orbiting companions. dwarfs down to planets as light as a few
tough. The dots represent measured points Planetary nebulae are some of the Earth masses. Only 10 percent of plane-
along an extremely high resolution spectrum most stunning sights in the universe. taries are spherical, a sign that nothing
of the star HD 82943. (The graph is only 0.1 When a star with less than eight solar has interfered with the outflowing gas.
nanometer, or 1 angstrom unit, wide.) The blue masses enters its final death throes it Most interestingly, spherical planetary
curve represents a model spectrum produced sheds its outer layers, exposing its hot, nebula arise only from low-metallicity
by pure lithium-7. Instead, the data points fit a white-dwarf core. Yet the shape of the stars. Therefore, Soker concludes, “low-
model spectrum that includes about 10 per- expelled gas differs radically from star metal stars have a very low chance of
cent lithium-6. Above: An artist’s conception of to star. having planets.” And all other single
a giant planet falling into HD 82943. Most planetary nebulae appear oblong, stars that end up as planetary nebulae
looking either elliptical or hourglass- do have them. Soker’s research has been
job. So would a terrestrial planet having shaped. Only a few are truly spherical. (In submitted to the Monthly Notices of the
three Earth masses or, perhaps more fact, the famous Ring Nebula appears Royal Astronomical Society.
likely, three Earths’ worth of comets and round only because we are looking — DAVID TYTELL
asteroids.
This is the first time lithium-6 has Planetary nebulae appear very different from one another depending in part on what orbited
been definitely found in any star with a the dying star in the center, claims Noam Soker. Spherical planetary nebulae have nothing
metallicity similar to the Sun’s. The as- revolving around them to disturb the shape of the gas being puffed off. Moderately elliptical
tronomers used the powerful new UVES planetaries come from stars orbited by brown dwarfs or planets, while extremely elongated,
spectrometer on the 8.2-meter Kueyen hourglass-, or butterfly-shaped planetaries are molded by orbiting stars.
reflector at the European Southern Ob-
servatory’s Very Large Telescope to tease
the spectral signature of lithium-6 from
the more common lithium-7.
HOWARD BOND, ROBIN CIARDULLO, AND NASA

The abundances of the two isotopes

taken together offer particularly com-
pelling evidence, comments Suchitra
Balachandran (University of Maryland).

HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM

“Lithium-6 is more fragile than lithium-7
and gets destroyed at a much lower tem-
perature,” she explains. And yet, about 90
percent of this star’s original allotment of
lithium-7 has been destroyed, while lithi-
um-6 remains. The only plausible explana-
tion is that the lithium-6 was added later.
The idea of a star gulping down a
BRUCE BALICK, VINCENT ICKE, GARRELT MELLEMA, AND NASA

planet captured the imaginations of sci-

ence reporters, but Alessandro Morbidelli
(Observatory of the Côte d’Azur) has
another scenario based on events closer
to home. In his models of our own early
solar system, the asteroid belt began with
four or five Earth masses, and almost all
of it was gravitationally scattered away.
(The belt contains about 0.001 Earth
mass now.) Of the lost asteroids, Mor-
bidelli finds that about one-fourth should
have ended up in the Sun. — A. M.

©2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope August 2001 23