A Detection of Water in the Transmission Spectrum of the Hot Jupiter WASP-12b and Implications for its Atmospheric Composition
Laura Kreidberg,Michael R. Line,Jacob L. Bean,Kevin B. Stevenson,Jean-Michel Desert,Nikku Madhusudhan,Jonathan J. Fortney,Joanna K. Barstow,Gregory W. Henry,Michael H. Williamson,Adam P. Showman +10 more
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TLDR
In this article, a near-infrared transmission spectrum for WASP-12b based on six transit observations with the Hubble Space Telescope/Wide Field Camera 3 (HST-WFC) was reported.Abstract:
Detailed characterization of exoplanets has begun to yield measurements of their atmospheric properties that constrain the planets’ origins and evolution. For example, past observations of the dayside emission spectrum of the hot Jupiter WASP-12b indicated that its atmosphere has a high carbon-tooxygen ratio (C/O > 1), suggesting it had a dierent formation pathway than is commonly assumed for giant planets. Here we report a precise near-infrared transmission spectrum for WASP-12b based on six transit observations with the Hubble Space Telescope/Wide Field Camera 3. We bin the data in 13 spectrophotometric light curves from 0.84 - 1.67 m and measure the transit depths to a median precision of 51 ppm. We retrieve the atmospheric properties using the transmission spectrum and nd strong evidence for water absorption (7 condence). This detection marks the rst high-condence, spectroscopic identication of a molecule in the atmosphere of WASP-12b. The retrieved 1 water volume mixing ratio is between 10 5 10 2 , which is consistent with C/O > 1 to within 2 . However, we also introduce a new retrieval parameterization that ts for C/O and metallicity under the assumption of chemical equilibrium. With this approach, we constrain C/O to 0:5 +0:2 0:3 at 1 and rule out a carbon-rich atmosphere composition (C/O> 1) at > 3 condence. Further observations and modeling of the planet’s global thermal structure and dynamics would aid in resolving the tension between our inferred C/O and previous constraints. Our ndings highlight the importance of obtaining high-precision data with multiple observing techniques in order to obtain robust constraints on the chemistry and physics of exoplanet atmospheres. Subject headings: planets and satellites: atmospheres | planets and satellites: composition | planets and satellites: individual: WASP-12bread more
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Water Abundance of the Directly Imaged Substellar Companion {\kappa} And b Retrieved from a Near Infrared Spectrum
Kamen O. Todorov,Michael R. Line,Jaime E. Pineda,Michael Meyer,Sascha P. Quanz,Sasha Hinkley,Jonathan J. Fortney +6 more
TL;DR: In this article, a near-infrared spectrum of a substellar companion to a young B9 star was used to estimate the abundances of water vapor and its uncertainty, and an upper limit on the abundance of CH$_4$.
Journal ArticleDOI
C/O and O/H Ratios Suggest Some Hot Jupiters Originate Beyond the Snow Line
TL;DR: In this article, the measured planetary and stellar abundances of carbon and oxygen for ten systems with hot Jupiters were compared against their host stars, and it was shown that a sizable fraction of hot Jupsiters will show enrichment of C/O and lower O/H than their hosts, similar to HD 209458b.
Journal ArticleDOI
Transmission Spectroscopy of WASP-79b from 0.6 to 5.0 μm
K. S. Sotzen,K. S. Sotzen,Kevin B. Stevenson,Kevin B. Stevenson,David K. Sing,Brian M. Kilpatrick,Hannah R. Wakeford,Joseph C. Filippazzo,Nikole K. Lewis,Sarah M. Hörst,Sarah M. Hörst,Mercedes López-Morales,Gregory W. Henry,Lars A. Buchhave,David Ehrenreich,Jonathan Fraine,Antonio García Muñoz,Rahul Jayaraman,Panayotis Lavvas,Alain Lecavelier des Etangs,Mark S. Marley,Nikolay Nikolov,Alexander D. Rathcke,Jorge Sanz-Forcada +23 more
Journal ArticleDOI
The Hubble Space Telescope PanCET Program : An Optical to Infrared Transmission Spectrum of HAT-P-32Ab
Munazza Alam,Mercedes Lopez-Morales,Nikolay Nikolov,David K. Sing,Gregory W. Henry,Claire Baxter,Jean-Michel Desert,Joanna K. Barstow,Thomas Mikal-Evans,Vincent Bourrier,Panayotis Lavvas,Hannah R. Wakeford,Michael H. Williamson,Jorge Sanz-Forcada,Lars A. Buchhave,Ofer Cohen,Antonio García Muñoz +16 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a 0.3-5 μm transmission spectrum of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-32Ab observed with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and Wide Field Camera 3 instruments mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope, combined with Spitzer Infrared Array Camera photometry.
Journal ArticleDOI
Retrieval Analysis of the Emission Spectrum of WASP-12b: Sensitivity of Outcomes to Prior Assumptions and Implications for Formation History
Maria Oreshenko,Baptiste Lavie,Baptiste Lavie,Simon L. Grimm,Shang-Min Tsai,Matej Malik,Brice-Olivier Demory,Christoph Mordasini,Yann Alibert,Willy Benz,Sascha P. Quanz,Roberto Trotta,Kevin Heng +12 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the emission spectrum of the hot Jupiter WASP-12b was analyzed using the HELIOS-R retrieval code and the HeliOS-K opacity calculator.
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