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Register a new userDiscovery of a Transiting Adolescent Sub-Neptune Exoplanet with K2
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The role of stellar age in the measured properties and occurrence rates of exoplanets is not well understood. This is in part due to a paucity of known young planets and the uncertainties in age-dating for most exoplanet host stars. Exoplanets with well-constrained ages, particularly those which are young, are useful as benchmarks for studies aiming to constrain the evolutionary timescales relevant for planets. Such timescales may concern orbital migration, gravitational contraction, or atmospheric photo-evaporation, among other mechanisms. Here we report the discovery of an adolescent transiting sub-Neptune from K2 photometry of the low-mass star K2-284. From multiple age indicators we estimate the age of the star to be 120 Myr, with a 68% confidence interval of 100-760 Myr. The size of K2-284 b ($R_P$ = 2.8 $pm$ 0.1 $R_oplus$) combined with its youth make it an intriguing case study for photo-evaporation models, which predict enhanced atmospheric mass loss during early evolutionary stages.
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Results from the Kepler mission indicate that the occurrence rate of small planets ($<3$ $R_oplus$) in the habitable zone of nearby low-mass stars may be as high as 80%. Despite this abundance, probing the conditions and atmospheric properties on any habitable-zone planet is extremely difficult and has remained elusive to date. Here, we report the detection of water vapor and the likely presence of liquid and icy water clouds in the atmosphere of the $2.6$ $R_oplus$ habitable-zone planet K2-18b. The simultaneous detection of water vapor and clouds in the mid-atmosphere of K2-18b is particularly intriguing because K2-18b receives virtually the same amount of total insolation from its host star ($1368_{-107}^{+114}$ W m$^{-2}$) as the Earth receives from the Sun (1361 W m$^{-2}$), resulting in the right conditions for water vapor to condense and explain the detected clouds. In this study, we observed nine transits of K2-18b using HST/WFC3 in order to achieve the necessary sensitivity to detect the water vapor, and we supplement this data set with Spitzer and K2 observations to obtain a broader wavelength coverage. While the thick hydrogen-dominated envelope we detect on K2-18b means that the planet is not a true Earth analog, our observations demonstrate that low-mass habitable-zone planets with the right conditions for liquid water are accessible with state-of-the-art telescopes.
We report the discovery of NGTS-4b, a sub-Neptune-sized planet transiting a 13th magnitude K-dwarf in a 1.34d orbit. NGTS-4b has a mass M=$20.6pm3.0$M_E and radius R=$3.18pm0.26$R_E, which places it well within the so-called Neptunian Desert. The mean density of the planet ($3.45pm0.95$g/cm^3) is consistent with a composition of 100% H$_2$O or a rocky core with a volatile envelope. NGTS-4b is likely to suffer significant mass loss due to relatively strong EUV/X-ray irradiation. Its survival in the Neptunian desert may be due to an unusually high core mass, or it may have avoided the most intense X-ray irradiation by migrating after the initial activity of its host star had subsided. With a transit depth of $0.13pm0.02$%, NGTS-4b represents the shallowest transiting system ever discovered from the ground, and is the smallest planet discovered in a wide-field ground-based photometric survey.
We report precise mass and density measurements of two extremely hot sub-Neptune-size planets from the K2 mission using radial velocities, K2 photometry, and adaptive optics imaging. K2-66 harbors a close-in sub-Neptune-sized (2.49$^{+0.34}_{-0.24} R_oplus$) planet (K2-66b) with a mass of 21.3 $pm$ 3.6 $M_oplus$. Because the star is evolving up the sub-giant branch, K2-66b receives a high level of irradiation, roughly twice the main sequence value. K2-66b may reside within the so-called photoevaporation desert, a domain of planet size and incident flux that is almost completely devoid of planets. Its mass and radius imply that K2-66b has, at most, a meager envelope fraction (< 5%) and perhaps no envelope at all, making it one of the largest planets without a significant envelope. K2-106 hosts an ultra-short-period planet ($P$ = 13.7 hrs) that is one of the hottest sub-Neptune-size planets discovered to date. Its radius (1.82$^{+0.20}_{-0.14} R_oplus$) and mass (9.0 $pm$ 1.6 $M_oplus$) are consistent with a rocky composition, as are all other small ultra-short-period planets with well-measured masses. K2-106 also hosts a larger, longer-period planet (Rp = 2.77$^{+0.37}_{-0.23} R_oplus$, $P$ = 13.3 days) with a mass less than 24.4 $M_oplus$ at 99.7% confidence. K2-66b and K2-106b probe planetary physics in extreme radiation environments. Their high densities reflect the challenge of retaining a substantial gas envelope in such extreme environments.
The atmospheric composition of exoplanets with masses between 2 and 10 M$_oplus$ is poorly understood. In that regard, the sub-Neptune K2-18b, which is subject to Earth-like stellar irradiation, offers a valuable opportunity for the characterisation of such atmospheres. Previous analyses of its transmission spectrum from the Kepler, Hubble (HST), and Spitzer space telescopes data using both retrieval algorithms and forward-modelling suggest the presence of H$_2$O and an H$_2$--He atmosphere, but have not detected other gases, such as CH$_4$. We present simulations of the atmosphere of K2-18 b using Exo-REM, our self-consistent 1D radiative-equilibrium model, using a large grid of atmospheric parameters to infer constraints on its chemical composition. We show that our simulations favour atmospheric metallicities between 40 and 500 times solar and indicate, in some cases, the formation of H$_2$O-ice clouds, but not liquid H$_2$O clouds. We also confirm the findings of our previous study, which showed that CH$_4$ absorption features nominally dominate the transmission spectrum in the HST spectral range. We compare our results with results from retrieval algorithms and find that the H$_2$O-dominated spectrum interpretation is either due to the omission of CH$_4$ absorptions or a strong overfitting of the data. Finally, we investigated different scenarios that would allow for a CH$_4$-depleted atmosphere. We were able to fit the data to those scenarios, finding, however, that it is very unlikely for K2-18b to have a high internal temperature. A low C/O ratio ($approx$ 0.01--0.1) allows for H$_2$O to dominate the transmission spectrum and can fit the data but so far, this set-up lacks a physical explanation. Simulations with a C/O ratio $<$ 0.01 are not able to fit the data satisfactorily.
We present new Spitzer transit observations of four K2 transiting sub-Neptunes: K2-36c, K2-79b, K2-167b, and K2-212b. We derive updated orbital ephemerides and radii for these planets based on a joint analysis of the Spitzer, TESS, and K2 photometry. We use the EVEREST pipeline to provide improved K2 photometry, by detrending instrumental noise and K2s pointing jitter. We used a pixel level decorrelation method on the Spitzer observations to reduce instrumental systematic effects. We modeled the effect of possible blended eclipsing binaries, seeking to validate these planets via the achromaticity of the transits (K2 versus Spitzer). However, we find that Spitzers signal-to-noise ratio for these small planets is insufficient to validate them via achromaticity. Nevertheless, by jointly fitting radii between K2 and Spitzer observations, we were able to independently confirm the K2 radius measurements. Due to the long time baseline between the K2 and Spitzer observations, we were also able to increase the precision of the orbital periods compared to K2 observations alone. The improvement is a factor of 3 for K2-36c, and more than an order of magnitude for the remaining planets. Considering possible JWST observations in 1/2023, previous 1 sigma uncertainties in transit times for these planets range from 74 to 434 minutes, but we have reduced them to the range of 8 to 23 minutes.
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