Atmospheric Characterization via Broadband Color Filters on the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) Mission

Grenfell, John Lee; Godolt, M.; Cabrera, J.; Carone, L.; Muñoz, A. García; Kitzmann, Daniel; Smith, A. M. S.; Rauer, H.

doi:10.1007/s10686-020-09660-1

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 208 publications

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“…Fortunately the outlook for improving on such observations is excellent. The PLATO mission (Rauer et al 2014) is expected to discover a host of new transiting hot giant planets around bright stars, making them perfect for atmospheric retrieval, and will even be able to perform some atmospheric characterisation on its own (Grenfell et al 2020). The Ariel mission will then allow hitherto unforeseen precision in atmospheric retrieval (Tinetti et al 2018), placing far tighter constraints on models such as ours.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Super stellar abundances of alkali metals suggest significant migration for Hot Jupiters

Hands,

Helled

2021

Preprint

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We investigate the origin of the measured over-abundance of alkali metals in the atmospheres of hot gas giants, relative to both their host stars and their atmospheric water abundances. We show that formation exterior to the water snow line followed by inward disc-driven migration results in excess accretion of oxygen-poor, refractory-rich material from within the snow-line. This naturally leads to enrichment of alkali metals in the planetary atmosphere relative to the bulk composition of its host star but relative abundances of water that are similar to the stellar host. These relative abundances cannot be explained by in situ formation which places the refractory elements in the planetary deep interior rather than the atmosphere. We therefore suggest that the measured compositions of the atmospheres of hot Jupiters are consistent with significant migration for at least a subset of hot gas giants. Our model makes robust predictions about atmospheric composition that can be confirmed with future data from JWST and Ariel.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Super stellar abundances of alkali metals suggest significant migration for Hot Jupiters

Hands,

Helled

2021

Preprint

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“…Table 5 provides a comparison of the cloud-free vs full model set prediction accuracies for the three metrics and the three most MMW-correlated filter pairs. From this table, we can see that, unlike for reflectance photometry (Batalha et al 2018;Grenfell et al 2020), clouds have very little impact on the predictive performance of our transmission color analysis -the super-Earth /sub-Neptune prediction accuracies are essentially the same between the two data sets. The very slight decrease in prediction performance that we see for some of the cloud-free cases is due to the number of training models being decreased by a factor of four when using only the cloud-free models, as is evident in a comparison of the confusion matrices in Tables 4 and 6.…”

Section: Findings For Cloud-free Spectramentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Moreover, Crossfield & Kreidberg (2017) found a positive correlation between the amplitude of the 1.4-µm H 2 O feature and the temperature and atmospheric H/He abundance for 6 Neptune-sized planets with radii of 2-6 R ⊕ and temperatures of 500-1000 K. Batalha et al (2018) also showed that it is possible to classify giant planets in reflectance color-color (i.e., color ratios) space using WFIRST-like filters for planets that do not have significant cloud coverage. Grenfell et al (2020) went on to investigate the utility of transmission depth differences for the filters of the PLAnetary Transits and Oscilllations of stars (PLATO) mission, showing that basic atmospheric types (primary and water-dominated) and the presence of submicron hazes could be distinguished for some planets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reflectance color-color trends ensue from correlations between the relative strengths of different reflectance features and characteristics of a planet or world (e.g., the presence and type of atmosphere; Traub (2003); Crow et al (2011);Triaud (2014); Triaud et al (2014); Batalha et al (2018); Dransfield & Triaud (2020); Grenfell et al (2020); Melville et al (2020)). For example, Crow et al (2011) found that the solar system worlds, and Earth in particular, can be categorized based on the presence or predominance of Rayleigh scattering in the ultraviolet and blue wavelengths.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Utility of Transmission Color Analysis I: Differentiating Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes

Sotzen,

Stevenson,

May

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of transiting exoplanets entails the use of spectrographs on large telescopes, requiring significant observing time to study each planet. Previous studies have demonstrated trends for solar system worlds using color-color photometry of reflectance spectra, as well as trends within transmission spectra for hot Jupiters. Building on these concepts, we have investigated the use of transmission color photometric analysis for efficient, coarse categorization of exoplanets and for assessing the nature of these worlds, with a focus on resolving the bulk composition degeneracy to aid in discriminating super-Earths and sub-Neptunes.We present our methodology and first results, including spectrum models, model comparison frameworks, and wave band selection criteria. We present our results for different transmission "color" metrics, filter selection methods, and numbers of filters. Assuming noise-free spectra of isothermal atmospheres in chemical equilibrium, with our pipeline, we are able to constrain atmospheric mean molecular weight in order to distinguish between super-Earth and sub-Neptune atmospheres with >90% overall accuracy using as few as two specific low-resolution filter combinations. We also found that increasing the number of filters does not substantially impact this performance. This method could allow for broad characterization of large numbers of planets much more efficiently than current methods permit, enabling population and system-level studies. Additionally, data collected via this method could inform follow-up observing time by large telescopes for more detailed studies of worlds of interest.

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“…The remaining two cameras are optimised for fast monitoring of very bright stars, their colour measurements (e.g. Grenfell et al 2020), and fine guidance and navigation. Their focal plane is equipped with frame transfer detectors that allow for a coverage somewhat larger than 600 degrees.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The all-sky PLATO input catalogue

Montalto

Piotto

Marrese

et al. 2021

A&A

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Context. The ESA PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission will search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars. Because of telemetry limitations, PLATO targets need to be pre-selected. Aims. In this paper, we present an all sky catalogue that will be fundamental to selecting the best PLATO fields and the most promising target stars, deriving their basic parameters, analysing the instrumental performances, and then planing and optimising follow-up observations. This catalogue also represents a valuable resource for the general definition of stellar samples optimised for the search of transiting planets. Methods. We used Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) astrometry and photometry and 3D maps of the local interstellar medium to isolate FGK (V≤13) and M (V≤16) dwarfs and subgiant stars. Results. We present the first public release of the all-sky PLATO Input Catalogue (asPIC1.1) containing a total of 2 675 539 stars including 2 378 177 FGK dwarfs and subgiants and 297 362 M dwarfs. The median distance in our sample is 428 pc for FGK stars and 146 pc for M dwarfs, respectively. We derived the reddening of our targets and developed an algorithm to estimate stellar fundamental parameters (T eff , radius, mass) from astrometric and photometric measurements. Conclusions. We show that the overall (internal+external) uncertainties on the stellar parameter determined in the present study are ∼230 K (4%) for the effective temperatures, ∼0.1 R (9%) for the stellar radii, and ∼0.1 M (11%) for the stellar mass. We release a special target list containing all known planet hosts cross-matched with our catalogue.

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Atmospheric Characterization via Broadband Color Filters on the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) Mission

Cited by 12 publications

References 208 publications

Super stellar abundances of alkali metals suggest significant migration for Hot Jupiters

Super stellar abundances of alkali metals suggest significant migration for Hot Jupiters

On the Utility of Transmission Color Analysis I: Differentiating Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes

The all-sky PLATO input catalogue

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