A CONSISTENT RETRIEVAL ANALYSIS OF 10 HOT JUPITERS OBSERVED IN TRANSMISSION

By J. Barstow, Suzanne Aigrain, P. Irwin, D. Sing. 2016

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a consistent optimal estimation retrieval analysis of 10 hot Jupiter exoplanets, each with transmission spectral data spanning the visible to near-infrared wavelength range. Using the NEMESIS radiative transfer and retrieval tool, we calculate a range of possible atmospheric states for WASP-6b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b, WASP-19b, WASP-31b, WASP-39b, HD 189733b, HD 209458b, HAT-P-1b, and HAT-P-12b. We find that the spectra of all 10 planets are consistent with the presence of some atmospheric aerosol; WASP-6b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b, WASP-19b, HD 189733b, and HAT-P-12b are all fit best by Rayleigh scattering aerosols, whereas WASP-31b, WASP-39b and HD 209458b are better represented by a gray cloud model. HAT-P-1b has solutions that fall into both categories. WASP-6b, HAT-P-12b, HD 189733b, and WASP-12b must have aerosol extending to low atmospheric pressures (below 0.1 mbar). In general, planets with equilibrium temperatures between 1300 and 1700 K are best represented by deeper, gray cloud layers, whereas cooler or hotter planets are better fit using high Rayleigh scattering aerosol. We find little evidence for the presence of molecular absorbers other than H2O. Retrieval methods can provide a consistent picture across a range of hot Jupiter atmospheres with existing data, and will be a powerful tool for the interpretation of James Webb Space Telescope observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2208340cd73859804a07c303745e4ca1325337f8

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Citations in the corpus

Exoplanetary Atmospheres: Key Insights, Challenges, and Prospects (2019, methodology): “On the other hand, the lowtemperature super-Earths and Neptunes have mostly shown flat spectra in the WFC3 bandpass (131, 124) with a few exceptions (85, 277), which indicate the predominance of clouds in low-temperature atmospheres.”
HST PanCET Program: A Cloudy Atmosphere for the Promising JWST Target WASP-101b (2017, background): “WASP31b was found to have a grey cloud that sits reasonably low in the atmosphere with a spectral signature that extends from the optical to the near-IR (see Sing et al. 2015, and Barstow et al. 2016).”