<i>HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE</i>NEAR-IR TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY OF THE SUPER-EARTH HD 97658B

Knutson, Heather A.; Dragomir, Diana; Kreidberg, Laura; Kempton, Eliza M.-R.; McCullough, P. R.; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Bean, Jacob L.; Gillon, M.; Homeier, D.; Howard, Andrew W.

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/794/2/155

Cited by 199 publications

(200 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…The exoplanets are shown in blue and the planets in our Solar System in red. While the lower mass exoplanets have a large range in their density for a given mass (see also Wolfgang & Laughlin 2012;Marcy et al 2014a;Howe, Burrows & Verne 2014;Knutson et al 2014), the giant planets show a clear correlation of increasing density with mass. Thus, the super-Earths may have a wide range of compositions (Valencia, Sasselov & O'Connell 2007).…”

Section: Planet Massesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Solar System as an Exoplanetary System

Martin

Livio

2015

ApJ

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With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful, statistical comparison. We find that the masses and densities of the giant planets in our Solar System are very typical, as is the age of the Solar System. While the orbital location of Jupiter is somewhat of an outlier, this is most likely due to strong selection effects towards short-period planets. The eccentricities of the planets in our Solar System are relatively small compared to those in observed exosolar systems, but still consistent with the expectations for an 8-planet system (and could, in addition, reflect a selection bias towards high-eccentricity planets). The two characteristics of the Solar System that we find to be most special are the lack of super-Earths with orbital periods of days to months and the general lack of planets inside of the orbital radius of Mercury. Overall, we conclude that in terms of its broad characteristics our Solar System is not expected to be extremely rare, allowing for a level of optimism in the search for extrasolar life.

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Section: Planet Massesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Solar System as an Exoplanetary System

Martin

Livio

2015

ApJ

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“…(A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.) Kreidberg et al 2014;Knutson et al 2014;McCullough et al 2014). We use HST/WFC3 to measure precise transmission and emission spectra for the 2 M Jup , short-period exoplanet WASP-43b that enable comparative planetology with gas giants in the solar system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A PRECISE WATER ABUNDANCE MEASUREMENT FOR THE HOT JUPITER WASP-43b

Kreidberg

Bean

Désert

et al. 2014

ApJ

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378

484

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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.

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“…Since the host star is very bright, these observations were obtained using spatial scans. This technique allows the telescope to slew during the exposure to avoid saturation of the detector and has already been successfully used to provide an increasing number of exoplanetary spectra (e.g., Deming et al 2013;Crouzet et al 2014;Fraine et al 2014;Knutson et al 2014aKnutson et al , 2014bKreidberg et al 2014aKreidberg et al , 2014bKreidberg et al , 2015McCullough et al 2014;Stevenson et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of an Atmosphere Around the Super-Earth 55 Cancri E

Tsiaras

Rocchetto

Waldmann

et al. 2016

ApJ

258

238

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We report the analysis of two new spectroscopic observations in the near-infrared of the super-Earth 55 Cancri e, obtained with the WFC3 camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope. 55 Cancri e orbits so close to its parent star that temperatures much higher than 2000 K are expected on its surface. Given the brightness of 55 Cancri, the observations were obtained in scanning mode, adopting a very long scanning length and a very high scanning speed. We use our specialized pipeline to take into account systematics introduced by these observational parameters when coupled with the geometrical distortions of the instrument. We measure the transit depth per wavelength channel with an average relative uncertainty of 22 ppm per visit and find modulations that depart from a straight line model with a 6σ confidence level. These results suggest that 55 Cancri e is surrounded by an atmosphere, which is probably hydrogen-rich. Our fully Bayesian spectral retrieval code,  -REx, has identified HCN to be the most likely molecular candidate able to explain the features at 1.42 and 1.54 μm. While additional spectroscopic observations in a broader wavelength range in the infrared will be needed to confirm the HCN detection, we discuss here the implications of such a result. Our chemical model, developed with combustion specialists, indicates that relatively high mixing ratios of HCN may be caused by a high C/O ratio. This result suggests this super-Earth is a carbon-rich environment even more exotic than previously thought.

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HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPENEAR-IR TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY OF THE SUPER-EARTH HD 97658B

Cited by 199 publications

References 62 publications

The Solar System as an Exoplanetary System

The Solar System as an Exoplanetary System

A PRECISE WATER ABUNDANCE MEASUREMENT FOR THE HOT JUPITER WASP-43b

Detection of an Atmosphere Around the Super-Earth 55 Cancri E

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