Recent surveys have revealed that planets intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune ('super-Earths') are among the most common planets in the Galaxy. Atmospheric studies are the next step towards developing a comprehensive understanding of this new class of object. Much effort has been focused on using transmission spectroscopy to characterize the atmosphere of the super-Earth archetype GJ 1214b (refs 7 - 17), but previous observations did not have sufficient precision to distinguish between two interpretations for the atmosphere. The planet's atmosphere could be dominated by relatively heavy molecules, such as water (for example, a 100 per cent water vapour composition), or it could contain high-altitude clouds that obscure its lower layers. Here we report a measurement of the transmission spectrum of GJ 1214b at near-infrared wavelengths that definitively resolves this ambiguity. The data, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope, are sufficiently precise to detect absorption features from a high mean-molecular-mass atmosphere. The observed spectrum, however, is featureless. We rule out cloud-free atmospheric models with compositions dominated by water, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen or carbon dioxide at greater than 5σ confidence. The planet's atmosphere must contain clouds to be consistent with the data.

I introduce batman, a Python package for modeling exoplanet transit light curves. The batman package supports calculation of light curves for any radially symmetric stellar limb darkening law, using a new integration algorithm for models that cannot be quickly calculated analytically. The code uses C extension modules to speed up model calculation and is parallelized with OpenMP. For a typical light curve with 100 data points in transit, batman can calculate one million quadratic limb-darkened models in 30 seconds with a single 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. The same calculation takes seven minutes using the four-parameter nonlinear limb darkening model (computed to 1 ppm accuracy). Maximum truncation error for integrated models is an input parameter that can be set as low as 0.001 ppm, ensuring that the community is prepared for the precise transit light curves we anticipate measuring with upcoming facilities. The batman package is open source and publicly available at https://github.com/lkreidberg/batman .Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, accepted to PASP; this version adds an eclipse model and modifies transit parameterization in response to refere

We perform a Bayesian analysis of the mass distribution of stellar-mass black holes using the observed masses of 15 low-mass X-ray binary systems undergoing Roche lobe -2overflow and five high-mass, wind-fed X-ray binary systems. Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo calculations, we model the mass distribution both parametrically-as a power law, exponential, gaussian, combination of two gaussians, or log-normal distribution-and non-parametrically-as histograms with varying numbers of bins. We provide confidence bounds on the shape of the mass distribution in the context of each model and compare the models with each other by calculating their relative Bayesian evidence as supported by the measurements, taking into account the number of degrees of freedom of each model. The mass distribution of the low-mass systems is best fit by a power-law, while the distribution of the combined sample is best fit by the exponential model. This difference indicates that the low-mass subsample is not consistent with being drawn from the distribution of the combined population. We examine the existence of a "gap" between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes by considering the value, M 1% , of the 1% quantile from each black hole mass distribution as the lower bound of black hole masses. Our analysis generates posterior distributions for M 1% ; the best model (the power law) fitted to the low-mass systems has a distribution of lower-bounds with M 1% > 4.3 M with 90% confidence, while the best model (the exponential) fitted to all 20 systems has M 1% > 4.5 M with 90% confidence. We conclude that our sample of black hole masses provides strong evidence of a gap between the maximum neutron star mass and the lower bound on black hole masses. Our results on the low-mass sample are in qualitative agreement with those of Ozel et al. (2010), although our broad model-selection analysis more reliably reveals the best-fit quantitative description of the underlying mass distribution. The results on the combined sample of low-and high-mass systems are in qualitative agreement with Fryer & Kalogera (2001) although the presence of a mass gap remains theoretically unexplained.

The water abundance in a planetary atmosphere provides a key constraint on the planet's primordial origins because water ice is expected to play an important role in the core accretion model of planet formation. However, the water content of the solar system giant planets is not well known because water is sequestered in clouds deep in their atmospheres. By contrast, short-period exoplanets have such high temperatures that their atmospheres have water in the gas phase, making it possible to measure the water abundance for these objects. We present a precise determination of the water abundance in the atmosphere of the 2 M Jup short-period exoplanet WASP-43b based on thermal emission and transmission spectroscopy measurements obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. We find the water content is consistent with the value expected in a solar composition gas at planetary temperatures (0.4-3.5× solar at 1σ confidence). The metallicity of WASP-43b's atmosphere suggested by this result extends the trend observed in the solar system of lower metal enrichment for higher planet masses.

Context.A new class of exoplanets has emerged: the ultra hot Jupiters, the hottest close-in gas giants. The majority of them have weaker-than-expected spectral features in the 1.1 − 1.7µm bandpass probed by HST/WFC3 but stronger spectral features at longer wavelengths probed by Spitzer. This led previous authors to puzzling conclusions about the thermal structures and chemical abundances of these planets. Aims. We investigate how thermal dissociation, ionization, H − opacity, and clouds shape the thermal structures and spectral properties of ultra hot Jupiters. Methods. We use the SPARC/MITgcm to model the atmospheres of four ultra hot Jupiters and discuss more thoroughly the case of WASP-121b. We expand our findings to the whole population of ultra hot Jupiters through analytical quantification of the thermal dissociation and its influence on the strength of spectral features. Results. We predict that most molecules are thermally dissociated and alkalies are ionized in the dayside photospheres of ultra hot Jupiters. This includes H 2 O, TiO, VO, and H 2 but not CO, which has a stronger molecular bond. The vertical molecular gradient created by the dissociation significantly weakens the spectral features from H 2 O while the 4.5µm CO feature remains unchanged. The water band in the HST/WFC3 bandpass is further weakened by the continuous opacity of the H − ions. Molecules are expected to recombine before reaching the limb, leading to order of magnitude variations of the chemical composition and cloud coverage between the limb and the dayside. Conclusions. Molecular dissociation provides a qualitative understanding of the lack of strong spectral features of water in the 1 − 2µm bandpass observed in most ultra hot Jupiters. Quantitatively, our model does not provide a satisfactory match to the WASP-121b emission spectrum. Together with WASP-33b and Kepler-33Ab, they seem the outliers among the population of ultra hot Jupiters, in need of a more thorough understanding.