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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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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Book ChapterDOI
Atmospheric Retrieval of Exoplanets
TL;DR: Exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval refers to the inference of atmospheric properties of an exoplanet given an observed spectrum as discussed by the authors, which can provide key insights into the atmospheric physicochemical processes of exoplanets as well as their formation mechanisms.
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A mirage of the cosmic shoreline: Venus-like clouds as a statistical false positive for exoplanet atmospheric erosion.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a self-consistent cloud formation of the seven TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets to investigate the atmospheric depth that can be probed using both transmission and emission spectroscopy.
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Hot Exoplanet Atmospheres Resolved with Transit Spectroscopy (HEARTS) - VI. Non-detection of sodium with HARPS on the bloated super-Neptune WASP-127b
Julia V. Seidel,Monika Lendl,Vincent Bourrier,David Ehrenreich,Romain Allart,S. G. Sousa,Heather M. Cegla,Heather M. Cegla,Xavier Bonfils,U. Conod,A. Grandjean,Aurélien Wyttenbach,Nicola Astudillo-Defru,Daniel Bayliss,Kevin Heng,Baptiste Lavie,C. Lovis,Claudio Melo,Francesco Pepe,Damien Ségransan,Stéphane Udry +20 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used combined EulerCam and TESS light curves to recalculate the system parameters, and presented an in-depth search for sodium in four transit observations of WASP-127b, obtained as part of the Hot Exoplanet Atmosphere Resolved with Transit Spectroscopy (HEARTS) survey with the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph.
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The Exoplanet Perspective on Future Ice Giant Exploration
Hannah R. Wakeford,Paul A. Dalba +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss what characteristics we can measure for exoplanets, and why a mission to the ice giants in our solar system is the logical next step for understanding ex-oplanets.
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From cold to hot irradiated gaseous exoplanets: Toward an observation-based classification scheme
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors quantify the C/O ratios at which this separation occurs by calculating a large self-consistent grid of cloud-free atmospheric models in chemical equilibrium, using the latest version of petitCODE.
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