The Complete Transmission Spectrum of WASP-39b with a Precise Water Constraint

Creators: Wakeford, H. R.; Sing, D. K.; Deming, D.; Lewis, N. K.; Goyal, J.; Wilson, T. J.; Barstow, J.; Kataria, T.; Drummond, B.; Evans, T. M.; Carter, A. L.; Nikolov, N.; Knutson, H. A.; Ballester, G. E.; Mandell, A. M.

Abstract

WASP-39b is a hot Saturn-mass exoplanet with a predicted clear atmosphere based on observations in the optical and infrared. Here, we complete the transmission spectrum of the atmosphere with observations in the near-infrared (NIR) over three water absorption features with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) G102 (0.8–1.1 μm) and G141 (1.1–1.7 μm) spectroscopic grisms. We measure the predicted high-amplitude H_2O feature centered at 1.4 μm and the smaller amplitude features at 0.95 and 1.2 μm, with a maximum water absorption amplitude of 2.4 planetary scale heights. We incorporate these new NIR measurements into previously published observational measurements to complete the transmission spectrum from 0.3 to 5 μm. From these observed water features, combined with features in the optical and IR, we retrieve a well constrained temperature T_(eq) = 1030_(-20)^(+30) K, and atmospheric metallicity 151_(-46)^(+48) x solar, which is relatively high with respect to the currently established mass–metallicity trends. This new measurement in the Saturn-mass range hints at further diversity in the planet formation process relative to our solar system giants.

Additional Information

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2017 September 18; revised 2017 November 24; accepted 2017 November 27; published 2017 December 21. The authors thank K. B. Stevenson for useful discussions on the data analysis. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope that were obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. These observations are associated with programs GO-14169 (PI. HR Wakeford) and GO-14260 (PI. D Deming). D.K.S., H.R.W., T.E., B.D., and N.N., acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 336792. J.G. acknowledges support from Leverhulme Trust. A.L.C. acknowledges support from the STFC. H.R.W. also acknowledges support from the Giacconi Fellowship at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System, and components of the IDL astronomy library, and the Python modules SciPy, NumPy, and Matplotlib. Many thanks go to the crew of STS-125 HST servicing mission 4, for fixing HST and for installing WFC3 over a period of 5 EVAs that took a total of 36 hr 56 minutes, almost matching the total exposure time taken by these observations. Also, thank you to Mac Time machine without which this project would not have been possible, due to multiple moves and hard-drive failures. Facility: HST (WFC3) - .

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