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
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Clouds in the atmosphere of the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 1214b
Laura Kreidberg,Jacob L. Bean,Jean-Michel Desert,Björn Benneke,Drake Deming,Kevin B. Stevenson,Sara Seager,Zachory K. Berta-Thompson,Andreas Seifahrt,Derek Homeier +9 more
TL;DR: A measurement of the transmission spectrum of GJ 1214b at near-infrared wavelengths is reported, sufficiently precise to detect absorption features from a high mean-molecular-mass atmosphere and rule out cloud-free atmospheric models with compositions dominated by water, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen or carbon dioxide.
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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
TL;DR: The difference between the planetary radius measured at optical and infrared wavelengths is an effective metric for distinguishing different atmosphere types, so that strong water absorption lines are seen in clear-atmosphere planets and the weakest features are associated with clouds and hazes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Characterizing transiting exoplanet atmospheres with jwst
Thomas P. Greene,Michael R. Line,Cezar Montero,Jonathan J. Fortney,Jacob Lustig-Yaeger,Kyle Luther +5 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how well spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will likely constrain bulk atmospheric properties of transiting exoplanets.
Journal ArticleDOI
A PRECISE WATER ABUNDANCE MEASUREMENT FOR THE HOT JUPITER WASP-43b
Laura Kreidberg,Jacob L. Bean,Jean-Michel Desert,Michael R. Line,Jonathan J. Fortney,Nikku Madhusudhan,Kevin B. Stevenson,Adam P. Showman,David Charbonneau,Peter R. McCullough,Sara Seager,Adam Burrows,Gregory W. Henry,Michael H. Williamson,Tiffany Kataria,Derek Homeier +15 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the water abundance in the atmosphere of the 2 MJup short-period exoplanet WASP-43b was determined based on thermal emission and transmission spectroscopy measurements obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope.
Journal ArticleDOI
A featureless transmission spectrum for the Neptune-mass exoplanet GJ 436b
TL;DR: Observations of GJ 436b’s atmosphere obtained during transit indicate that the planet's transmission spectrum is featureless, ruling out cloud-free, hydrogen-dominated atmosphere models with an extremely high significance of 48σ.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
THREE-DIMENSIONAL ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION MODELS OF HD 189733b AND HD 209458b WITH CONSISTENT MAGNETIC DRAG AND OHMIC DISSIPATION
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the first three-dimensional circulation models for extrasolar gas giant atmospheres with geometrically and energetically consistent treatments of magnetic drag and ohmic dissipation.
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On the Inference of Thermal Inversions in Hot Jupiter Atmospheres
Nikku Madhusudhan,Sara Seager +1 more
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Probing the terminator region atmosphere of the hot-jupiter xo-1b with transmission spectroscopy
Giovanna Tinetti,Pieter Deroo,Mark R. Swain,Caitlin A. Griffith,Gautam Vasisht,Linda R. Brown,Christopher J. Burke,Peter R. McCullough +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the infrared spectrum of the hot-Jupiter XO-1b was obtained with the NICMOS instrument on board the Hubble Space Telescope during a primary eclipse of the XO1 system.
Journal ArticleDOI
A new look at NICMOS transmission spectroscopy of HD189733, GJ-436 and XO-1: no conclusive evidence for molecular features
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a re-analysis of archival HST/NICMOS transmission spectroscopy of three exoplanet systems; HD 189733, GJ-436 and XO-1.
Journal ArticleDOI
Probing the haze in the atmosphere of HD 189733b with HST/WFC3 transmission spectroscopy
Neale P. Gibson,Suzanne Aigrain,Frederic Pont,David K. Sing,Jean-Michel Desert,Thomas M. Evans,Gregory W. Henry,Nawal Husnoo,Heather Knutson +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a near-infrared transmission spectroscopy of the transiting exoplanet HD 189733b using Wide Field Camera 3 was presented, which consists of time-series spectra of two transits, used to measure the wavelength dependence of the planetary radius.
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