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Register a new userProbing the terminator region atmosphere of the Hot-Jupiter XO-1b with transmission spectroscopy
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We report here the first infrared spectrum of the hot-Jupiter XO-1b. The observations were obtained with NICMOS instrument onboard the Hubble Space Telescope during a primary eclipse of the XO-1 system. Near photon-noise-limited spectroscopy between 1.2 and 1.8 micron allows us to determine the main composition of this hot-Jupiters planetary atmosphere with good precision. This is the third hot-Jupiters atmosphere for which spectroscopic data are available in the near IR. The spectrum shows the presence of water vapor (H2O), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), and suggests the possible presence of carbon monoxide (CO). We show that the published IRAC secondary transit emission photometric data are compatible with the atmospheric composition at the terminator determined from the NICMOS spectrum, with a range of possible mixing-ratios and thermal profiles; additional emission spectroscopy data are needed to reduce the degeneracy of the possible solutions. Finally, we note the similarity between the 1.2-1.8 micron transmission spectra of XO-1b and HD 209458b, suggesting that in addition to having similar stellar/orbital and planetary parameters the two systems may also have a similar exoplanetary atmospheric composition.
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We present FORS2 (attached to ESOs Very Large Telescope) observations of the exoplanet WASP-17b during its primary transit, for the purpose of differential spectrophotometry analysis. We use the instrument in its Mask eXchange Unit (MXU) mode to simultaneously obtain low resolution spectra of the planet hosting star, as well as several reference stars in the field of view. The integration of these spectra within broadband and smaller 100$AA$ bins provides us with white and spectrophotometric light curves, from 5700 to 8000$AA$. Through modelling the white light curve, we obtain refined bulk and transit parameters of the planet, as well as wavelength-dependent variations of the planetary radius from smaller spectral bins through which the transmission spectrum is obtained. The inference of transit parameters, as well as the noise statistics, is performed using a Gaussian Process model. We achieve a typical precision in the transit depth of a few hundred parts per million from various transit light curves. From the transmission spectra we rule out a flat spectrum at >3$sigma$ and detect marginal presence of the pressure-broadened sodium wings. Furthermore, we detect the wing of the potassium absorption line in the upper atmosphere of the planet with 3$sigma$ confidence, both facts pointing to a relatively shallow temperature gradient of the atmosphere. These conclusions are mostly consistent with previous studies of this exo-atmosphere, although previous potassium measurements have been inconclusive.
Consideration of both low- and high-resolution transmission spectroscopy is key for obtaining a comprehensive picture of exoplanet atmospheres. In studies of transmission spectra, the continuum information is well established with low-resolution spectra, while the shapes of individual lines are best constrained with high-resolution observations. In this work, we aim to merge high- with low-resolution transmission spectroscopy. We present the analysis of three primary transits of WASP-69b in the VIS channel of the CARMENES instrument and perform a combined low- and high-resolution analysis using additional data from HARPS-N, OSIRIS/GTC, and WFC3/HST already available in the literature. During the first CARMENES observing night, we detected the planet Na D$_{2}$ and D$_{1}$ lines at $sim 7sigma$ and $sim 3sigma$ significance levels, respectively. We measured a D$_{2}$/D$_{1}$ intensity ratio of 2.5$pm$0.7, which is in agreement with previous HARPS-N observations. Our modelling of WFC3 and OSIRIS data suggests strong Rayleigh scattering, solar to super-solar water abundance, and a highly muted Na feature in the atmosphere of this planet, in agreement with previous investigations of this target. We use the continuum information retrieved from the low-resolution spectroscopy as a prior to break the degeneracy between the Na abundance, reference pressure, and thermosphere temperature for the high-resolution spectroscopic analysis. We fit the Na D$_{1}$ and D$_{2}$ lines individually and find that the posterior distributions of the model parameters agree with each other within 1$sigma$. Our results suggest that local thermodynamic equilibrium processes can explain the observed D$_{2}$/D$_{1}$ ratio because the presence of haze opacity mutes the absorption features.
Exoplanetary transmission spectroscopy in the near-infrared using Hubble/NICMOS is currently ambiguous because different observational groups claim different results from the same data, depending on their analysis methodologies. Spatial scanning with Hubble/WFC3 provides an opportunity to resolve this ambiguity. We here report WFC3 spectroscopy of the giant planets HD209458b 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-percent (XO-1) and 26-percent (HD209458b) of the photon-limit at a spectral resolving power of 70, and are better than 0.01-percent per spectral channel. Both planets exhibit water absorption of approximately 200 ppm at the water peak near 1.38 microns. Our result for XO-1b contradicts the much larger absorption derived from NICMOS spectroscopy. The weak water absorption we measure for HD209458b is reminiscent of the weakness of sodium absorption in the first transmission spectroscopy of an exoplanet atmosphere by Charbonneau et al. (2002). Model atmospheres having uniformly-distributed extra opacity of 0.012 cm^2 per gram account approximately for both our water measurement and the sodium absorption in this planet. Our results for HD209458b support the picture advocated by Pont et al. (2013) 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 HD209458b is grayer than for HD189733b, with a weaker Rayleigh component.
We have conducted a re-analysis of publicly available Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 (HST WFC3) transmission data for the hot-Jupiter exoplanet WASP-43b, using the Bayesian retrieval package Tau-REx. We report evidence of AlO in transmission to a high level of statistical significance (> 5-sigma in comparison to a flat model, and 3.4-sigma in comparison to a model with H2O only). We find no evidence of the presence of CO, CO2, or CH4 based on the available HST WFC3 data or on Spitzer IRAC data. We demonstrate that AlO is the molecule that fits the data to the highest level of confidence out of all molecules for which high-temperature opacity data currently exists in the infrared region covered by the HST WFC3 instrument, and that the subsequent inclusion of Spitzer IRAC data points in our retrieval further supports the presence of AlO. H2O is the only other molecule we find to be statistically significant in this region. AlO is not expected from the equilibrium chemistry at the temperatures and pressures of the atmospheric layer that is being probed by the observed data. Its presence therefore implies direct evidence of some disequilibrium processes with links to atmospheric dynamics. Implications for future study using instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are discussed, along with future opacity needs. Comparisons are made with previous studies into WASP-43b.
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