Transit spectrophotometry of the exoplanet HD189733b. I. Searching for water but finding haze with HST NICMOS

By D. Sing, J. D'esert, A. D. Étangs, Gilda E. Ballester, A. Vidal-Madjar, V. Parmentier, G. Hébrard, G. Henry. 2009

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We present Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared transit photometry of the nearby hot-Jupiter HD 189733b. The observations were taken with the NICMOS instrument during five transits, with three transits executed with a narrowband filter at 1.87 μ ma nd two performed with a narrowband filter at 1.66 μm. Our observing strategy using narrowband filters is insensitive to the usual HST intraorbit and orbit-to-orbit measurement of systematic errors, allowing us to accurately and robustly measure the near-IR wavelength dependance of the planetary radius. Our measurements fail to reproduce the previously claimed detection of an absorption signature of atmospheric H2 Ob elow 2μ ma t a5 σ confidence level. We measure a planet-to-star radius contrast of 0.15498± 0.00035 at 1.66 μm and a contrast of 0.15517 ± 0.00019 at 1.87 μm. Both of our near-IR planetary radii values are in excellent agreement with the levels expected from Rayleigh scattering by sub-micron haze particles, observed at optical wavelengths, indicating that upper-atmospheric haze still dominates the near-IR transmission spectra over the absorption from gaseous molecular species at least below 2 μm.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

THE FLAT TRANSMISSION SPECTRUM OF THE SUPER-EARTH GJ1214b FROM WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3 ON THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE (2011, background): “…of the hot Jupiter HD189733b, where the uniform decrease in transit depth from 0.3 to 1 µm (Pont et al. 2008; Lecavelier Des Etangs et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2011) and perhaps to as far as 3.6 µm (see Sing et al. 2009; Désert et al. 2009) has been convincingly attributed to a small particle haze.”
Limb darkening and exoplanets: testing stellar model atmospheres and identifying biases in transit parameters (2015, methodology): “⋆ E-mail:nespino@astro.puc.cl † E-mail: ajordan@astro.puc.cl The non-linear law has as a special case the square-root law proposed by Dı́az-Cordovéz & Giménez (1992), which is obtained by setting c3 = c4 = 0, and the variant, threeparameter law, introduced by Sing et al. (2009), with c1 = 0.”
THE CLIMATE OF HD 189733b FROM FOURTEEN TRANSITS AND ECLIPSES MEASURED BY SPITZER (2010, background): “We follow the approaches in Knutson et al. (2009) and Sing et al. (2009) to derive a new estimate of the relation between the optical and 8 micron flux variability of the star by comparing our data set with that of Henry and Winn (2008), plus additional unpublished data.”
Evaporation of the planet HD 189733b observed in H I Lyman-α (2010, background): “High signal-to-noise HST/NICMOS observations (Sing et al. 2009) have recently shown that the near-IR spectrum below 2 µm is dominated by haze scattering rather than by water absorption (Swain et al. 2008).”
Detection of water absorption in the day side atmosphere of HD 189733 b using ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy at 3.2 μm (2013, background): “…most studied exoplanets to date, with strong evidence for a high-altitude haze that causes Rayleigh scattering from 0.3 to 1 µm (Pont et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2009, 2011; Pont et al. 2013), reports of H2O absorption features at infrared wavelengths (Tinetti et al. 2007; Grillmair et al. 2008;…”
Hubble Space Telescope transmission spectroscopy of the exoplanet HD 189733b: high‐altitude atmospheric haze in the optical and near‐ultraviolet with STIS (2011, methodology): “…also covers the HD189733 stellar activity during the epochs of the HST transmission spectra from Pont et al. (2007), Swain, Vasisht & Tinetti (2008) and Sing et al. (2009), and as well as the Spitzer transit photometry of Désert et al. (2009), Knutson et al. (2009), and Désert et al. (2011).”
DISEQUILIBRIUM CARBON, OXYGEN, AND NITROGEN CHEMISTRY IN THE ATMOSPHERES OF HD 189733b AND HD 209458b (2011, background): “Various groups do not always agree, even when examining the same or similar datasets (cf. Désert et al. 2009 vs. Beaulieu et al. 2008 vs. Ehrenreich et al. 2007; Swain et al. 2008b vs. Sing et al. 2009 vs. Gibson et al. 2010; Stevenson et al. 2010 vs. Beaulieu et al. 2011).”
A chemical model for the atmosphere of hot Jupiters (2012, background): “…2008; Grillmair et al. 2008; Swain et al. 2009b, for emission spectrum) and (Knutson et al. 2007, 2009; Swain et al. 2008b; Beaulieu et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2009; Désert et al. 2009; Agol et al. 2010, for transmission spectrum), but we do not discuss the agreement between observations and…”
Hubble Space Telescope hot Jupiter transmission spectral survey: a detection of Na and strong optical absorption in HAT-P-1b (2013, background): “…of HD 189733b is described by an increasing planetary radius with decreasing wavelength, most likely due to Rayleigh scattering (Pont et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2009, 2011b; Lecavelier Des Etangs et al. 2008) and presence of narrow line cores of sodium peaking above the slope (Redfield et al.…”
The prevalence of dust on the exoplanet HD 189733b from Hubble and Spitzer observations (2012, methodology): “Claims of detection of molecular features in the infrared (Swain et al. 2008) have not been confirmed by subsequent measurements and analyses (Sing et al. 2009; Désert et al. 2009, 2011; Gibson et al. 2011, 2012b).”
An HST optical-to-near-IR transmission spectrum of the hot Jupiter WASP-19b: detection of atmospheric water and likely absence of TiO (2013, methodology): “Follow-up observations using the same instrument found results to be consistent with no water, or a highaltitude haze obscuring water features (Sing et al. 2009).”
Optimal estimation retrievals of the atmospheric structure and composition of HD 189733b from secondary eclipse spectroscopy (2011, methodology): “…upper layers of an exoplanetary atmosphere, have been measured in the near-, mid- and farinfrared (NIR, MIR and FIR, respectively) by both theHubble Space Telescope (HST ) (Swain et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2009) andSpitzer telescope (Tinetti et al. 2007a; Beaulieu et al. 2008; Désert et al. 2009).”
WATER VAPOR IN THE SPECTRUM OF THE EXTRASOLAR PLANET HD 189733b. I. THE TRANSIT (2014, methodology): “We fit the light curve with the procedure of Mandel & Agol (2002), using quadratic limb darkening coefficientsu1 = 0.1378 andu2 = 0.232, which we derived by fitting two parameters of a quadratic law to the three-parameter limb-darkening law adopted by Sing et al. (2009) for λ = 1.66 µm.”
3.6 AND 4.5 μm PHASE CURVES AND EVIDENCE FOR NON-EQUILIBRIUM CHEMISTRY IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF EXTRASOLAR PLANET HD 189733b (2012, background): “…as well as more controversial detections of methane, carbon monoxide, and water absorption in its infrared transmission spectrum (Swain et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2009; Désert et al. 2009; Gibson et al. 2011a,b) and carbon dioxide absorption in its dayside emission spectrum (Swain et al. 2009).”
Transits and Occultations (2010, unknown): “From Sing et al. (2009).”
Stellar limb-darkening coefficients for CoRot and Kepler (2009, background): “However, different LDC calculation methods may help improve the situation, with (Sing et al. 2009) recently fitting near-infrared LDCs to a level of a few percent with HST/NICMOS transit data Send offprint requests to: D. K. Sing 1 http://kurucz.harvard.edu/ of HD 189733, finding good agreement…”
Detection of carbon monoxide in the high-resolution day-side spectrum of the exoplanet HD 189733b (2013, background): “Hence, we conclude that the haze layer seen by Pont et al. (2008); Sing et al. (2009); Pont et al. (2012) is either optically thin when seen at normal incidence angles and that consequently there is no temperature inversion in the middle atmosphere, or that the haze layer is optically thick, but…”
Temperature–pressure profile of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b from HST sodium observations: detection of upper atmospheric heating (2012, methodology): “We also combine the temperature measurement from Sing et al. (2009) with that from Lecavelier des Etangs et al. (2008a) since they are both derived from fits to the broad-band Rayleigh slope.”
Transmission spectral properties of clouds for hot Jupiter exoplanets (2014, background): “E P] 3 0 Se p 20 14 erties, with their spectra dominated by strong optical Rayleigh and / or Mie scattering from high-altitude aerosol particles (Pont et al. 2008, 2013; Sing et al. 2009, 2011, 2013; Gibson et al. 2013).”