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Science 11 July 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5630, pp. 193 - 196
DOI: 10.1126/science.1086326
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Reports

A Young White Dwarf Companion to Pulsar B1620-26: Evidence for Early Planet Formation

Steinn Sigurdsson,1* Harvey B. Richer,2 Brad M. Hansen,3 Ingrid H. Stairs,2 Stephen E. Thorsett4

The pulsar B1620-26 has two companions, one of stellar mass and one of planetary mass. We detected the stellar companion with the use of Hubble Space Telescope observations. The color and magnitude of the stellar companion indicate that it is an undermassive white dwarf (0.34 ± 0.04 solar mass) of age 480 x 106 ± 140 x 106 years. This places a constraint on the recent history of this triple system and supports a scenario in which the current configuration arose through a dynamical exchange interaction in the cluster core. This implies that planets may be relatively common in low-metallicity globular clusters and that planet formation is more widespread and has happened earlier than previously believed.

1 525 Davey Laboratory, Department of Astronomy, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. 2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada. 3 Department of Physics and Astronomy and Institute of Geology and Planetary Physics, University of California at Los Angeles, Math-Sciences 8971, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1562, USA. 4 Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: steinn{at}astro.psu.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Pulsars in Binary Systems: Probing Binary Stellar Evolution and General Relativity.
I. H. Stairs (2004)
Science 304, 547-552
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