Hubble Space Telescope transmission spectroscopy of the exoplanet HD 189733b: high‐altitude atmospheric haze in the optical and near‐ultraviolet with STIS

By D. Sing, F. Pont, Suzanne Aigrain, D. Charbonneau, J. D'esert, Neale P. Gibson, R. Gilliland, W. Hayek, G. Henry, H. Knutson and 3 more. 2011

349 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) optical and near-ultraviolet transmission spectra of the transiting hot Jupiter HD 189733b, taken with the repaired Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument. The resulting spectra cover the range 2900–5700 A and reach per exposure signal-to-noise ratio levels greater than 11 000 within a 500-A bandwidth. We used time series spectra obtained during two transit events to determine the wavelength dependence of the planetary radius and measure the exoplanet’s atmospheric transmission spectrum for the first time over this wavelength range. Our measurements, in conjunction with existing HST spectra, now provide a broad-band transmission spectrum covering the full optical regime. The STIS data also show unambiguous evidence of a large occulted stellar spot during one of our transit events, which we use to place constraints on the characteristics of the K dwarf’s stellar spots, estimating spot temperatures around T eff ∼ 4250 K. With contemporaneous ground-based photometric monitoring of the stellar variability, we also measure the correlation between the stellar activity level and transit-measured planet-to-star radius contrast, which is in good agreement with predictions. We find a planetary transmission spectrum in good agreement with that of Rayleigh scattering from a high-altitude atmospheric haze as previously found from HST Advanced Camera for Surveys. The high-altitude haze is now found to cover the entire optical regime and is well characterized by Rayleigh scattering. These findings suggest that haze may be a globally dominant atmospheric feature of the planet which would result in a high optical albedo at shorter optical wavelengths.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fbc2a3c2da36a692fb59d43e68d8cc2a1a30125b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

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): “We can be reasonably confident that our model describes the systematics well, since the dominant systematic trends of the STIS instrument are well known and understood (Sing et al. 2008, 2011a; Huitson et al. 2012).”
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 hot Jupiter transmission spectral survey: a detection of Na and strong optical absorption in HAT-P-1b (2013, background): “Similar to Sing et al. (2011a) the data for this study were collected with a wide 52×2′′ slit to minimise slit loses.”
Temporal variations in the evaporating atmosphere of the exoplanet HD 189733b (2012, background): “In these data, the transit depth for the total flux of the whole Lyman-α line is 2.9±1.4%, which agrees with the 2.4% transit depth of the planet body alone as seen from the visible to the near-infrared (Désert et al. 2009, 2011; Sing et al. 2011).”
Temperature–pressure profile of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b from HST sodium observations: detection of upper atmospheric heating (2012, methodology): “The spectrum was then corrected for unocculted spots by reducing the measured radii by 1% (see Sing et al. 2011) and aver- aged for the 3 visits.”
HST hot-Jupiter transmission spectral survey: evidence for aerosols and lack of TiO in the atmosphere of WASP-12b (2013, methodology): “3.0.1 STIS white-light curve fits Our overall analysis methods are similar to the HST analysis of Sing et al. (2011); Huitson et al. (2013) and Nikolov et al. (2013), which we also describe briefly here.”
Transmission spectral properties of clouds for hot Jupiter exoplanets (2014, background): “…exceeds the wavelength, the theory tends to geometric optics, while if the wavelength greatly exceeds the radius of the particle Mie theory tends to Rayleigh scattering as observed in a number of exoplanetary atmospheres in the UV and optical (Lecavelier Des Etangs et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2011).”
3.6 AND 4.5 μm PHASE CURVES AND EVIDENCE FOR NON-EQUILIBRIUM CHEMISTRY IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF EXTRASOLAR PLANET HD 189733b (2012, background): “…these variations are reduced in the infrared, they are still comparable to the planet’s phase curve and must be accounted for in our estimates of the phase curve amplitude (Knutson et al. 2009a) and wavelength-dependent transit depth (Pont et al. 2008; Désert et al. 2009, 2011a; Sing et al. 2011).”
THE FLAT TRANSMISSION SPECTRUM OF THE SUPER-EARTH GJ1214b FROM WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3 ON THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE (2011, background): “…case 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…”
ROTATION AND WINDS OF EXOPLANET HD 189733 b MEASURED WITH HIGH-DISPERSION TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY (2015, background): “…unique features, such as atmospheric escape (Lecavelier Des Etangs et al. 2010; Jensen et al. 2012) and the prominence of haze (Pont et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2011) masking most of the spectral features in the optical transmission spectrum, except for atomic sodium (Redfield et al. 2008; Huitson…”
Pale Orange Dots: The Impact of Organic Haze on the Habitability and Detectability of Earthlike Exoplanets (2016, background): “We have observed evidence for hazes or clouds in the transit transmission spectra of several exoplanets (Bean et al. 2010; Sing et al. 2011; Knutson et al. 2014a,b; Kreidberg et al. 2014; de Wit et al. 2016).”
WATER VAPOR IN THE SPECTRUM OF THE EXTRASOLAR PLANET HD 189733b. I. THE TRANSIT (2014, background): “This procedure is consistent with similar previous work (e.g., Pont et al. 2008, 2013; Sing et al. 2011).”
The prevalence of dust on the exoplanet HD 189733b from Hubble and Spitzer observations (2012, methodology): “(i) The statistics of spot-crossing events during the HST observations suggests a 1-2 % reference level (see Sing et al. 2011, for details).”
THERMAL PHASE VARIATIONS OF WASP-12b: DEFYING PREDICTIONS (2011, neutral): “9 and 2.7 (smaller than published values) at 3.6 and 4.5 μ m, respectively. of hazes or optical absorbers in the atmosphere of WASP-12b, as has been inferred for HD 189733b (Pont et al. 2008; Sing et al. 2011).”
The Hubble Space Telescope PanCET Program: Exospheric Mg ii and Fe ii in the Near-ultraviolet Transmission Spectrum of WASP-121b Using Jitter Decorrelation (2019, methodology): “In the case of HST STIS data, external detrending parameters including the 96 minute HST orbital phase, φHST , the Xpsf and Ypsf detector position of the PSF, and the wavelength shift Sλ of the spectra have been identified as optical state parameters (Brown et al. 2001; Sing et al. 2011).”
Disentangling the Planet from the Star in Late-Type M Dwarfs: A Case Study of TRAPPIST-1g (2018, background): “The effect of stellar activity on transmission spectra is not a new phenomenon (Sing et al. 2011; Huitson et al. 2013; Cauley et al. 2017; Bruno et al. 2018; Cauley et al. 2018), where inhomogeneities in the stellar flux can cause noticeable effects on the measured transit depths.”