Minerva-Australis radial velocity of AU Mic

The planet was recently discovered from preliminary analysis of radial-velocity observations and confirmed to be transiting its host star from photometric data from the NASA's TESS mission. We obtained radial-velocity measurements of AU Mic over the course of two partially observable transits and one full transit of planet b from high-resolution spectroscopic observations made with the MINERVA-Australis telescope array.

Only a marginal detection of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect signal was obtained from the radial velocities, in part due to AU Mic being an extremely active star and the lack of full transit coverage plus sufficient out-of-transit baseline. As such, a precise determination of the obliquity for AU Mic b is not possible in this study and we find a sky-projected spin-orbit angle of {lambda}=47_-54_^+26^deg . This result is consistent with both the planet's orbit being aligned or highly misaligned with the spin axis of its host star.