Evidence for chromium hydride in the atmosphere of hot Jupiter WASP-31b

Braam, Marrick; Tak, F. F. S. van der; Chubb, Katy L.; Min, M.

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202039509

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…At lower resolutions, transit and eclipse studies with ground-based facilities and Hubble continue to deliver new views of atmospheres (e.g. McGruder et al 2020;Braam et al 2021;Saba et al 2021;Yip et al 2021), with a recent focus on smaller planets (e.g. de Wit et al 2018;Benneke et al 2019;Tsiaras et al 2019;Diamond-Lowe et al 2020;Gressier et al 2021), and findings from these studies will further our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres.…”

Section: Discussion Conclusion and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ariel Target List: The Impact of TESS and the Potential for Characterising Multiple Planets Within a System

Edwards,

Tinetti

2022

Preprint

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The ESA Ariel mission has been adopted for launch in 2029 and will conduct a survey of around one thousand exoplanetary atmospheres during its primary mission life. By providing homogeneous datasets, with a high SNR and wide wavelength coverage, Ariel will unveil the atmospheric demographics of these far-away worlds, helping to constrain planet formation and evolution processes on a galactic scale. Ariel seeks to undertake a statistical survey of a diverse population of planets and, therefore, the sample of planets from which this selection can be made is of the utmost importance. While many suitable targets have already been found, hundreds more will be discovered before the mission is operational. Previous studies have used predictions of exoplanet detections to forecast the available planet population by the launch date of Ariel, with the most recent noting that the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) alone should provide over a thousand potential targets. In this work, we consider the planet candidates found to date by TESS to show that, with the addition of already confirmed planets, Ariel will already have a more than sufficient sample to choose its target list from once these candidates are validated. We showcase the breadth of this population as well as exploring, for the first time, the ability of Ariel to characterise multiple planets within a single system. Comparative planetology of worlds orbiting the same star, as well as across the wider population, will undoubtedly revolutionise our understanding of planet formation and evolution.

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Section: Discussion Conclusion and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ariel Target List: The Impact of TESS and the Potential for Characterising Multiple Planets Within a System

Edwards,

Tinetti

2022

Preprint

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“…This Bayesian log-evidence is then used to find the Bayes factor (B 01 ) (see e.g. Benneke & Seager 2013;Waldmann et al 2015;Braam et al 2021), which is a measure to assess the significance of one model against another and, given A114, page 7 of 27 A&A 659, A114 (2022) Table 4. Instrument and abundance set-ups for the models and retrievals of the four planets considered in this study.…”

Section: Detection Evidence From the Bayes Factormentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the detectability of hydrocarbons in exoplanet atmospheres with JWST

Gasman

Min

Chubb

2022

A&A

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Aims. We investigate at what abundances various hydrocarbon molecules (e.g. acetylene (C2H2), ethylene (C2H4), and methane (CH4)) become detectable when observing the atmospheres of various planets using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Methods. We focused on atmospheric models based on the parameters of a small sample of planets: HD 189733b, HD 209458b (hot Jupiters orbiting bright stars); HD 97658b (a sub-Neptune/super-Earth orbiting a bright star); and Kepler-30c (a warm Jupiter orbiting a faint star). We computed model transmission spectra, assuming equilibrium chemistry and clear atmospheres for all planets apart from HD 189733b, where we also computed spectra with a moderate cloud layer included. We used the Bayesian retrieval package ARCiS for the model atmospheres, and simulated observed spectra from different instruments that will be on board JWST using the PandExo package. We subsequently ran retrievals on these spectra to determine whether the parameters input into the forward models, with a focus on molecular abundances, can be accurately retrieved from these simulated spectra. Results. We find that generally we can detect and retrieve abundances of the hydrocarbon species as long as they have a volume mixing ratio above approximately 1 × 10−7–1 × 10−6, at least for the brighter targets. There are variations based on planet type and instrument(s) used, and these limits will likely change depending on the abundance of other strong absorbers. We also find scenarios where the presence of one hydrocarbon is confused with another, particularly when a small wavelength region is covered; this is often improved when two instruments are combined. Conclusions. The molecules C2H2, CH4, and C2H4 will all be detectable with JWST, provided they are present in high enough abundances, and that the optimal instruments are chosen for the exoplanet system being observed. Our results indicate that generally a combination of two instruments, either NIRSpec G395M and MIRI LRS, or NIRCam F322W2 and MIRI LRS, are best for observing these hydrocarbons in bright exoplanet systems with planets of various sizes, with NIRSpec G395M and MIRI LRS the best option for the HD 189733b-like atmosphere with clouds included. The use of NIRSpec Prism is tentatively found to be best for fainter targets, potentially in combination with the MIRI LRS slit mode, although the target we test is too faint to draw any strong conclusions. Instrument sensitivity, noise, and wavelength range are all thought to play a role in being able to distinguish spectral features.

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“…Merritt et al 2020). The presence of metal hydrides has been evidenced at low spectral resolution (Skaf et al 2020;Braam et al 2021), but no detections have been confirmed at high resolution (Kesseli et al 2020). The atmospheric models for the different species are shown in Fig.…”

Section: Atmospheric Models Of Mascara-1bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transmission spectroscopy of MASCARA-1b with ESPRESSO: Challenges of overlapping orbital and Doppler tracks

Casasayas-Barris

Borsa

Πάλλη

et al. 2022

A&A

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Atmospheric studies at high spectral resolution have shown the presence of molecules, neutral and ionised metals, and hydrogen in the transmission spectrum of ultra-hot Jupiters, and have started to probe the dynamics of their atmospheres. We analyse the transmission spectrum of MASCARA-1b, one of the densest ultra-hot Jupiters orbiting a bright (V=8.3) star. We focus on the Ca ii H&K, Na i doublet, Li i, Hα, and K i D1 spectral lines and on the cross-correlated Fe i, Fe ii, Ca i, Y i, V i, V ii, CaH, and TiO lines. For those species that are not present in the stellar spectrum, no detections are reported, but we are able to measure upper limits with an excellent precision (∼ 10 ppm for particular species) thanks to the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) achieved with Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) observations. For those species that are present in the stellar spectrum and whose planet-occulted spectral lines induce spurious features in the planetary transmission spectrum, an accurate modelling of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect (RM) and centre-to-limb variations (CLV) is necessary to recover possible atmospheric signals.In the case of MASCARA-1b, this is difficult due to the overlap between the radial velocities of the stellar surface regions occulted by MASCARA-1b and the orbital track along which the planet atmospheric signal is expected to be found. To try to disentangle a possible planetary signal, we compare our results with models of the RM and CLV effects, and estimate the uncertainties of our models depending on the different system parameters. Unfortunately, more precise measurements of the spin-orbit angle are necessary to better constrain the planet-occulted track and correct for the transit effects in the transmission spectrum with enough precision to be able to detect or discard possible planetary absorptions. Finally, we discuss the possibility that non-detections are related to the low absorption expected for a high surface gravity planet such as MASCARA-1b. Other techniques such as emission spectroscopy may be more useful for exploring their atmospheric composition. Key words. planetary systems -planets and satellites: individual: MASCARA-1 b -planets and satellites: atmospheres -methods: observational -techniques: spectroscopic * Based on guaranteed time observations (GTOs) collected at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) under ESO programme 1102.C-0744 by the ESPRESSO Consortium.

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Evidence for chromium hydride in the atmosphere of hot Jupiter WASP-31b

Cited by 18 publications

References 87 publications

The Ariel Target List: The Impact of TESS and the Potential for Characterising Multiple Planets Within a System

The Ariel Target List: The Impact of TESS and the Potential for Characterising Multiple Planets Within a System

Investigating the detectability of hydrocarbons in exoplanet atmospheres with JWST

Transmission spectroscopy of MASCARA-1b with ESPRESSO: Challenges of overlapping orbital and Doppler tracks

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