Abstract
The three planets of the Kepler-30 system align closely with a starspot, indicating their common birth in a gaseous disk. Similar alignments could inform us about the origin of planets orbiting our stellar neighbours. See Letter p.449 In our Solar System, the Sun's equator and the planets' orbital planes are almost in alignment. This probably reflects the way they formed, from a single spinning disk of gas. Many exoplanet systems do not display this arrangement, however, and isolated 'hot Jupiters' are often misaligned and even have a retrograde orbit. This paper reports an exoplanet system that features alignments similar to those in the Solar System. Analysis of planetary transits across starspots on the Sun-like star Kepler-30 shows that the orbits of its three planets are aligned with the stellar equator. These findings support the suggestion that high orbital tilts (obliquities) are confined to systems that have experienced dynamic interactions of the type that produce hot Jupiters and potentially rule out star–disk misalignments as a cause.
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