INFRARED TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY OF THE EXOPLANETS HD 209458b AND XO-1b USING THE WIDE FIELD CAMERA-3 ON THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
Drake Deming,Drake Deming,A. Wilkins,Peter R. McCullough,Adam Burrows,Jonathan J. Fortney,Eric Agol,Eric Agol,Ian Dobbs-Dixon,Ian Dobbs-Dixon,Nikku Madhusudhan,Nicolas Crouzet,Jean-Michel Desert,Ronald L. Gilliland,Korey Haynes,Korey Haynes,Heather Knutson,Michael R. Line,Zazralt Magic,Avi Mandell,Sukrit Ranjan,David Charbonneau,Mark Clampin,Sara Seager,Adam P. Showman +24 more
TLDR
In this paper, the authors reported WFC3 spectroscopy of the giant planets HD 209458b and XO-1b in transit, using spatial scanning mode for maximum photon-collecting efficiency.Abstract:
Exoplanetary transmission spectroscopy in the near-infrared using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) NICMOS is currently ambiguous because different observational groups claim different results from the same data, depending on their analysis methodologies. Spatial scanning with HST/WFC3 provides an opportunity to resolve this ambiguity. We here report WFC3 spectroscopy of the giant planets HD 209458b and XO-1b in transit, using spatial scanning mode for maximum photon-collecting efficiency. We introduce an analysis technique that derives the exoplanetary transmission spectrum without the necessity of explicitly decorrelating instrumental effects, and achieves nearly photon-limited precision even at the high flux levels collected in spatial scan mode. Our errors are within 6% (XO-1) and 26% (HD 209458b) of the photon-limit at a resolving power of λ/δλ ~ 70, and are better than 0.01% per spectral channel. Both planets exhibit water absorption of approximately 200 ppm at the water peak near 1.38 μm. Our result for XO-1b contradicts the much larger absorption derived from NICMOS spectroscopy. The weak water absorption we measure for HD 209458b is reminiscent of the weakness of sodium absorption in the first transmission spectroscopy of an exoplanet atmosphere by Charbonneau et al. Model atmospheres having uniformly distributed extra opacity of 0.012 cm2 g−1 account approximately for both our water measurement and the sodium absorption. Our results for HD 209458b support the picture advocated by Pont et al. in which weak molecular absorptions are superposed on a transmission spectrum that is dominated by continuous opacity due to haze and/or dust. However, the extra opacity needed for HD 209458b is grayer than for HD 189733b, with a weaker Rayleigh component.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
No Thermal Inversion and a Solar Water Abundance for the Hot Jupiter HD 209458b from HST/WFC3 Spectroscopy
Michael R. Line,Michael R. Line,Kevin B. Stevenson,Jacob L. Bean,Jean-Michel Desert,Jonathan J. Fortney,Laura Kreidberg,Nikku Madhusudhan,Adam P. Showman,Hannah Diamond-Lowe +9 more
TL;DR: In a previous work as discussed by the authors, we presented the results of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship (PSIPF) and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (DFPF).
Journal ArticleDOI
H 2 O abundances and cloud properties in ten hot giant exoplanets
TL;DR: In this paper, a detailed and homogeneous atmospheric retrieval analysis of the entire sample and report the H$_2$O abundances, cloud properties, terminator temperature profiles, and detection significances of the chemical species.
Journal ArticleDOI
Atmospheric Dynamics of Hot Exoplanets
Kevin Heng,Adam P. Showman +1 more
TL;DR: The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the past decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods, and even wind speeds to be measured as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Atmospheric reconnaissance of the habitable-zone Earth-sized planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1
Julien de Wit,Hannah R. Wakeford,Hannah R. Wakeford,Nikole K. Lewis,Laetitia Delrez,Michaël Gillon,Frank Selsis,Jérémy Leconte,Brice-Olivier Demory,Emeline Bolmont,Vincent Bourrier,Adam J. Burgasser,Simon L. Grimm,Emmanuel Jehin,Susan M. Lederer,James E. Owen,Vlada Stamenkovic,Amaury H. M. J. Triaud +17 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report observations for the four planets within or near the TRAPPIST-1 system's habitable zone, the circumstellar region where liquid water could exist on a planetary surface.
Journal ArticleDOI
Characterizing Transiting Planet Atmospheres through 2025
Nicolas B. Cowan,Thomas P. Greene,Daniel Angerhausen,Natasha E. Batalha,Mark Clampin,Knicole D. Colón,Ian J. M. Crossfield,J. J. Fortney,B. S. Gaudi,Joseph Harrington,Nicolas Iro,Charles F. Lillie,Jeffrey L. Linsky,Mercedes Lopez-Morales,Avi Mandell,Kevin B. Stevenson +15 more
TL;DR: The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) as discussed by the authors will discover transiting planets orbiting the brightest stars, enabling, in principle, an atmospheric survey of 102-103 bright hot Jupiters and warm sub-Neptunes.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Analytic Lightcurves for Planetary Transit Searches
Kaisey S. Mandel,Eric Agol +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, exact analytic formulae for the eclipse of a star described by quadratic or nonlinear limb darkening are presented for the HST observations of HD 209458, showing that the ratio of the planetary to stellar radii is 0.1207+-0.0003.
Journal ArticleDOI
Analytic Light Curves for Planetary Transit Searches
Kaisey S. Mandel,Eric Agol +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the exact analytic formulae for the eclipse of a star described by quadratic or nonlinear limb darkening were presented, and the authors applied these results to the Hubble Space Telescope observations of HD 209458, showing that the ratio of the planetary to stellar radii is 0.1207 ± 0.0003.
Journal ArticleDOI
Detection of Planetary Transits Across a Sun-like Star.
TL;DR: High-precision, high-cadence photometric measurements of the star HD 209458 are reported, which is known from radial velocity measurements to have a planetary-mass companion in a close orbit and the detailed shape of the transit curve due to both the limb darkening of thestar and the finite size of the planet is clearly evident.
Journal ArticleDOI
Detection of an Extrasolar Planet Atmosphere
TL;DR: In this paper, high-precision spectrophotometric observations of four planetary transits of HD 209458, in the region of the sodium resonance doublet at 589.3 nm, were reported.
Journal ArticleDOI
Gravity and limb-darkening coefficients for the Kepler, CoRoT, Spitzer, uvby, UBVRIJHK, and Sloan photometric systems
A. Claret,Steven Bloemen +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a more general differential equation was used, which now takes into account local gravity variations and the effects of convection, which turn out to be very significant for cool stars.
Related Papers (5)
Infrared Transmission Spectroscopy of the Exoplanets HD209458b and XO-1b Using the Wide Field Camera-3 on the Hubble Space Telescope
Drake Deming,Ashlee Wilkins,Peter R. McCullough,Adam Burrows,Jonathan J. Fortney,Eric Agol,Ian Dobbs-Dixon,Nikku Madhusudhan,Nicolas Crouzet,Jean-Michel Desert,Ronald L. Gilliland,Korey Haynes,Heather Knutson,Michael R. Line,Zazralt Magic,Avi Mandell,Sukrit Ranjan,David Charbonneau,Mark Clampin,Sara Seager,Adam P. Showman +20 more
A continuum from clear to cloudy hot-Jupiter exoplanets without primordial water depletion
David K. Sing,Jonathan J. Fortney,Nikolay Nikolov,Hannah R. Wakeford,Tiffany Kataria,Thomas M. Evans,Suzanne Aigrain,Gilda E. Ballester,Adam Burrows,Drake Deming,Jean-Michel Desert,Neale P. Gibson,Gregory W. Henry,Catherine M. Huitson,Heather Knutson,Alain Lecavelier des Etangs,Frederic Pont,Adam P. Showman,Alfred Vidal-Madjar,Michael H. Williamson,Paul Wilson +20 more