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Register a new userThe Pyrat Bay Framework for Exoplanet Atmospheric Modeling: A Population Study of Hubble/WFC3 Transmission Spectra
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We present the open-source pyratbay framework for exoplanet atmospheric modeling, spectral synthesis, and Bayesian retrieval. The modular design of the code allows the users to generate atmospheric 1D parametric models of the temperature, abundances (in thermochemical equilibrium or constant-with-altitude), and altitude profiles in hydrostatic equilibrium; sample ExoMol and HITRAN line-by-line cross sections with custom resolving power and line-wing cutoff values; compute emission or transmission spectra considering cross sections from molecular line transitions, collision-induced absorption, Rayleigh scattering, gray clouds, and alkali resonance lines; and perform Markov chain Monte Carlo atmospheric retrievals for a given transit or eclipse dataset. We benchmarked the pyratbay framework by reproducing line-by-line cross-section sampling of ExoMol cross sections, producing transmission and emission spectra consistent with petitRADTRANS models, accurately retrieving the atmospheric properties of simulated transmission and emission observations generated with TauREx models, and closely reproducing Aura retrieval analyses of the space-based transmission spectrum of HD 209458b. Finally, we present a retrieval analysis of a population of transiting exoplanets, focusing on those observed in transmission with the HST WFC3/G141 grism. We found that this instrument alone can confidently identify when a dataset shows H2O-absorption features; however, it cannot distinguish whether a muted H2O feature is caused by clouds, high atmospheric metallicity, or low H2O abundance. Our results are consistent with previous retrieval analyses. The pyratbay code is available at PyPI (pip install pyratbay) and conda. The code is heavily documented (https://pyratbay.readthedocs.io) and tested to provide maximum accessibility to the community and long-term development stability.
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The occurrence of a planet transiting in front of its host star offers the opportunity to observe the planets atmosphere filtering starlight. The fraction of occulted stellar flux is roughly proportional to the optically thick area of the planet, the extent of which depends on the opacity of the planets gaseous envelope at the observed wavelengths. Chemical species, haze, and clouds are now routinely detected in exoplanet atmospheres through rather small features in transmission spectra, i.e., collections of planet-to-star area ratios across multiple spectral bins and/or photometric bands. Technological advances have led to a shrinking of the error bars down to a few tens of parts per million (ppm) per spectral point for the brightest targets. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is anticipated to deliver transmission spectra with precision down to 10 ppm. The increasing precision of measurements requires a reassessment of the approximations hitherto adopted in astrophysical models, including transit light curve models. Recently, it has been shown that neglecting the planets thermal emission can introduce significant biases in the transit depth measured with the JWST/Mid-InfraRed Instrument, integrated between 5 and 12 $mu$m. In this paper, we take a step forward by analyzing the effects of the approximation on transmission spectra over the 0.6-12 $mu$m wavelength range covered by various JWST instruments. We present open source software to predict the spectral bias, showing that, if not corrected, it may affect the inferred molecular abundances and thermal structure of some exoplanet atmospheres.
We observed the 2019 January total lunar eclipse with the Hubble Space Telescopes STIS spectrograph to obtain the first near-UV (1700-3200 $r{A}$) observation of Earth as a transiting exoplanet. The observatories and instruments that will be able to perform transmission spectroscopy of exo-Earths are beginning to be planned, and characterizing the transmission spectrum of Earth is vital to ensuring that key spectral features (e.g., ozone, or O$_3$) are appropriately captured in mission concept studies. O$_3$ is photochemically produced from O$_2$, a product of the dominant metabolism on Earth today, and it will be sought in future observations as critical evidence for life on exoplanets. Ground-based observations of lunar eclipses have provided the Earths transmission spectrum at optical and near-IR wavelengths, but the strongest O$_3$ signatures are in the near-UV. We describe the observations and methods used to extract a transmission spectrum from Hubble lunar eclipse spectra, and identify spectral features of O$_3$ and Rayleigh scattering in the 3000-5500 r{A} region in Earths transmission spectrum by comparing to Earth models that include refraction effects in the terrestrial atmosphere during a lunar eclipse. Our near-UV spectra are featureless, a consequence of missing the narrow time span during the eclipse when near-UV sunlight is not completely attenuated through Earths atmosphere due to extremely strong O$_3$ absorption and when sunlight is transmitted to the lunar surface at altitudes where it passes through the O$_3$ layer rather than above it.
We present new UV-to-IR stellar photometry of four low-extinction windows in the Galactic bulge, obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Using our five bandpasses, we have defined reddening-free photometric indices sensitive to stellar effective temperature and metallicity. We find that the bulge populations resemble those formed via classical dissipative collapse: each field is dominated by an old (~10 Gyr) population exhibiting a wide metallicity range (-1.5 < [Fe/H] < 0.5). We detect a metallicity gradient in the bulge population, with the fraction of stars at super-solar metallicities dropping from 41% to 35% over distances from the Galactic center ranging from 0.3 to 1.2 kpc. One field includes candidate exoplanet hosts discovered in the SWEEPS HST transit survey. Our measurements for 11 of these hosts demonstrate that exoplanets in the distinct bulge environment are preferentially found around high-metallicity stars, as in the solar neighborhood, supporting the view that planets form more readily in metal-rich environments.
We present a retrieval method based on Bayesian analysis to infer the atmospheric compositions and surface or cloud-top pressures from transmission spectra of exoplanets with general compositions. In this study, we identify what can unambiguously be determined about the atmospheres of exoplanets from their transmission spectra by applying the retrieval method to synthetic observations of the super-Earth GJ 1214b. Our approach to infer constraints on atmospheric parameters is to compute their joint and marginal posterior probability distributions using the MCMC technique in a parallel tempering scheme. A new atmospheric parameterization is introduced that is applicable to general atmospheres in which the main constituent is not known a priori and clouds may be present. Our main finding is that a unique constraint of the mixing ratios of the absorbers and up to two spectrally inactive gases (such as N2 and primordial H2+He) is possible if the observations are sufficient to quantify both (1) the broadband transit depths in at least one absorption feature for each absorber and (2) the slope and strength of the molecular Rayleigh scattering signature. The surface or cloud-top pressure can be quantified if a surface or cloud deck is present. The mean molecular mass can be constrained from the Rayleigh slope or the shapes of absorption features, thus enabling to distinguish between cloudy hydrogen-rich atmospheres and high mean molecular mass atmospheres. We conclude, however, that without the signature of Rayleigh scattering--even with robustly detected infrared absorption features--there is no reliable way to tell if the absorber is the main constituent of the atmosphere or just a minor species with a mixing ratio of <0.1%. The retrieval method leads us to a conceptual picture of which details in transmission spectra are essential for unique characterizations of well-mixed atmospheres.
KMOS (K-Band Multi Object Spectrograph) is a novel integral field spectrograph installed in the VLTs ANTU unit. The instrument offers an ability to observe 24 2.8$times$2.8 sub-fields positionable within a 7.2 patrol field, each sub-field producing a spectrum with a 14$times$14-pixel spatial resolution. The main science drivers for KMOS are the study of galaxies, star formation, and molecular clouds, but its ability to simultaneously measure spectra of multiple stars makes KMOS an interesting instrument for exoplanet atmosphere characterization via transmission spectroscopy. We set to test whether transmission spectroscopy is practical with KMOS, and what are the conditions required to achieve the photometric precision needed, based on observations of a partial transit of WASP-19b, and full transits of GJ 1214b and HD 209458b. Our analysis uses the simultaneously observed comparison stars to reduce the effects from instrumental and atmospheric sources, and Gaussian processes to model the residual systematics. We show that KMOS can, in theory, deliver the photometric precision required for transmission spectroscopy. However, this is shown to require a) pre-imaging to ensure accurate centering and b) a very stable night with optimal observing conditions (seeing $sim$0.8). Combining these two factors with the need to observe several transits, each with a sufficient out-of-transit baseline (and with the fact that similar or better precision can be reached with telescopes and instruments with smaller pressure,) we conclude that transmission spectroscopy is not the optimal science case to take advantage of the abilities offered by KMOS and VLT.
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