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

By Laura Kreidberg, J. Bean, J. D'esert, M. Line, Jon Fortney, N. Madhusudhan, Kevin B. Stevenson, A. Showman, D. Charbonneau, P. McCullough and 6 more. 2014

272 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 MJup 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.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea8ee0b7ad92d0d8622614b6dd4044dc19f5302b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Madhusudhan
2. Jon Fortney
3. A. Showman
4. M. Line
5. V. Parmentier
6. D. Deming
7. D. Sing
8. J. D'esert

Citations in the corpus

• THE INFLUENCE OF NONUNIFORM CLOUD COVER ON TRANSIT TRANSMISSION SPECTRA (2015, methodology): “…altitude opaque cloud in order to substantially flatten the spectra, a reasonable cloud top pressure in lieu of recently observed flat transmission spectra (Kreidberg et al. 2014, Knutson et al. 2014, Morley et al. 2012;2015) and GCM tracer studies (Parmentier et al. 2013, Charnay et al. 2015b).”
• H2O abundances and cloud properties in ten hot giant exoplanets (2018, methodology): “…used in reference to the predominant morphology of spectral features they induce in transmission spectra, especially in parametric models used for atmospheric retrieval or forward models (e.g., Benneke & Seager 2012; Kreidberg et al. 2014a; Sing et al. 2016; MacDonald & Madhusudhan 2017a).”
• HST PanCET Program: A Cloudy Atmosphere for the Promising JWST Target WASP-101b (2017, background): “Out of the previously well studied hot Jupiters (e.g., Deming et al. 2013; Kreidberg et al. 2014; Sing et al. 2016) WASP-101b is most similar to WASP-31b.”
• A Population Study of Gaseous Exoplanets (2017, methodology): “Spectral light-curves fitting Finally, we fitted the spectral light-curves using the divide-white method introduced by Kreidberg et al. (2014b), where the white light-curve was used as a comparison source, with the addition of a normalization factor and a wavelength-dependent slope, linear with…”
• WASP-47: A HOT JUPITER SYSTEM WITH TWO ADDITIONAL PLANETS DISCOVERED BY K2 (2015, background): “For these reasons, transiting hot Jupiters were and continue to be the subject of many follow-up studies (Kreidberg et al. 2014).”
• CHARACTERIZING TRANSITING EXOPLANET ATMOSPHERES WITH JWST (2015, methodology): “Kreidberg et al. (2014b) provided additional leverage on this relationship via a relatively good constraint on the water abundance in a 2 MJ hot Jupiter.”
• Chemical enrichment of giant planets and discs due to pebble drift (2017, background): “Nevertheless, observations show that hot Jupiters may have C/O ratios that range from approximately stellar (Kreidberg et al. 2014; Line et al. 2014; Haynes et al. 2015) to C/O & 1 (Madhusudhan et al. 2011; Stevenson et al. 2014)1.”
• 2018 Census of Interstellar, Circumstellar, Extragalactic, Protoplanetary Disk, and Exoplanetary Molecules (2018, unknown): “…[36] van Zadelhoff et al. (2001) References: [1] Barman et al. (2011) [2] Barman et al. (2015) [3] Deming et al. (2013) [4] Haynes et al. (2015) [5] Kreidberg et al. (2014) [6] Kreidberg et al. (2015) [7] Lanotte et al. (2014) [8] Lockwood et al. (2014) [9] Madhusudhan et al. (2011) [10] Nugroho…”
• A DETECTION OF WATER IN THE TRANSMISSION SPECTRUM OF THE HOT JUPITER WASP-12b AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ITS ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION (2015, methodology): “Data Reduction We reduced the HST/WFC3 data using the custom pipeline described in Kreidberg et al. (2014b).”
• A NEW APPROACH TO ANALYZING HST SPATIAL SCANS: THE TRANSMISSION SPECTRUM OF HD 209458 b (2015, methodology): “…studies of observations with WFC3 in staring-mode (Berta et al. 2012; Swain et al. 2013; Wilkins et al. 2014) and scanning mode (Deming et al. 2013; Kreidberg et al. 2014b; Knutson et al. 2014a) that the infrared detector introduces two time-dependent systematics to the light-curves of bright…”
• Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report (2015, background): “Near-IR spectra of transiting planets taken with HST WFC3 (and soon JWST) probe only much higher altitude regions, only to ~1 mbar (e.g., Kreidberg et al. 2014).”
• Equilibrium chemistry down to 100 K (2017, background): “…wavelengths to analyse e.g. the chemical composition of brown dwarfs (see Allard et al. 1997; Helling & Casewell 2014 and references in these reviews) and exoplanets (e.g. Désert et al. 2008; Grillmair et al. 2008; de Kok et al. 2013; Kreidberg et al. 2014; Fraine et al. 2014; Birkby et al. 2017).”
• Global Climate and Atmospheric Composition of the Ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-103b from HST and Spitzer Phase Curve Observations (2018, methodology): “We infer a range in metallicity of 23+29−13× solar, somewhat higher than expected based on Jupiter’s metal enrichment (3 − 5× solar; Wong et al. 2004) and the trend toward decreasing metallicity with increasing planet mass observed for the Solar System and exoplanets (e.g. Kreidberg et al. 2014a).”
• THE IMPRINT OF EXOPLANET FORMATION HISTORY ON OBSERVABLE PRESENT-DAY SPECTRA OF HOT JUPITERS (2016, background): “Table B1 lists the values of α and β found for the following seven data sets: (1) the observed atmospheric enrichment relative to the sun in carbon based on the CH4 abundance in the four giant planets of the Solar System as given in Data set Quantity Reference β α M1 M1,min M1,max 1 Solar system atm”
• SPITZER PHASE CURVE CONSTRAINTS FOR WASP-43b AT 3.6 AND 4.5 μm (2016, methodology): “This value is consistent with our previous estimate (0.4 – 3.5×, Kreidberg et al. 2014) based on the WFC3+IRAC transit and eclipse data alone.”
• From thermal dissociation to condensation in the atmospheres of ultra hot Jupiters: WASP-121b in context (2018, unknown): “E anisms (e.g., Kreidberg et al. 2014).”
• DETECTION OF AN ATMOSPHERE AROUND THE SUPER-EARTH 55 CANCRI E (2015, methodology): “We correct these systematics using an approach similar to Kreidberg et al. (2014b).”
• Exoplanetary Atmospheres: Key Insights, Challenges, and Prospects (2019, background): “The exoplanet H2O abundances are from various works: HD 209458b (206, 151), HD 189733b (206, 278), WASP12b (206), WASP-43b (132), WASP-33b (102), TrES-3 (148), GJ 436b (187), HAT-P-26b (277), WASP-39b (206), HR 8799 planets (143), κ And b (262).”
• SPITZER SECONDARY ECLIPSES OF THE DENSE, MODESTLY-IRRADIATED, GIANT EXOPLANET HAT-P- 20 b ?> USING PIXEL-LEVEL DECORRELATION (2014, background): “However, there are also planets whose emergent spectrum is clearly not a blackbody, WASP-43b being the most recent example (Kreidberg et al. 2014).”
• H− Opacity and Water Dissociation in the Dayside Atmosphere of the Very Hot Gas Giant WASP-18b (2018, methodology): “This is surprising for such massive gas giants, as their expected formation channels imply that their metallicities should be close to their host stars’, as observed in their cooler counterparts (e.g., Kreidberg et al. 2014b; Benneke 2015; Line et al. 2016).”