TY - JOUR
T1 - The HST PanCET Program
T2 - Hints of NaI and Evidence of a Cloudy Atmosphere for the Inflated Hot Jupiter WASP-52b
AU - Alam, Munazza K.
AU - Nikolov, Nikolay
AU - López-Morales, Mercedes
AU - Sing, David K.
AU - Goyal, Jayesh M.
AU - Henry, Gregory W.
AU - Sanz-Forcada, Jorge
AU - Williamson, Michael H.
AU - Evans, Thomas M.
AU - Wakeford, Hannah R.
AU - Bruno, Giovanni
AU - Ballester, Gilda E.
AU - Stevenson, Kevin B.
AU - Lewis, Nikole K.
AU - Barstow, Joanna K.
AU - Bourrier, Vincent
AU - Buchhave, Lars A.
AU - Ehrenreich, David
AU - Muñoz, Antonio García
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments that greatly improved this manuscript. This paper makes use of observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with program GO 14767. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh
Funding Information:
M.K.A. acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation through a Graduate Research Fellowship. G.W.H. and M.H.W. acknowledge support from Tennessee State University and the State of Tennessee through its Centers of Excellence program. J.S.F. acknowledges funding by the Spanish MINECO grant AYA2016-79425-C3-2-P. J.K.B. acknowledges support from the Royal Astronomical Society. V.B. and D.E. have received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (project Four Aces; grant agreement 724427).
Funding Information:
Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement 336792. We are thankful to Raphaelle Haywood, James Kirk, Chani Nava, and Ian Weaver for useful discussions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - We present an optical to near-infrared transmission spectrum of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-52b using three transit observations from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope, combined with Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera photometry at 3.6 and 4.5 μm. Since WASP-52 is a moderately active (log(Lx/Lbol)=-4.7) star, we correct the transit light curves for the effect of stellar activity using groundbased photometric monitoring data from the All-sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) and Tennessee State University's Automatic Imaging Telescope. We bin the data in 38 spectrophotometric light curves from 0.29 to 4.5 μm and measure the transit depths to a median precision of 90 ppm. We compare the transmission spectrum to a grid of forward atmospheric models and find that our results are consistent with a cloudy spectrum and evidence of sodium at 2.3σ confidence, but we find no observable evidence of potassium absorption even in the narrowest spectroscopic channel. We find that the optical transmission spectrum of WASP-52b is similar to that of the well-studied inflated hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b, which has comparable surface gravity, equilibrium temperature, mass, radius, and stellar irradiation levels. At longer wavelengths, however, the best-fitting models for WASP-52b and HAT-P-1b predict quite dissimilar properties, which could be confirmed with observations at wavelengths longer than ~1 μm. The identification of planets with common atmospheric properties and similar system parameters will be insightful for comparative atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope.
AB - We present an optical to near-infrared transmission spectrum of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-52b using three transit observations from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope, combined with Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera photometry at 3.6 and 4.5 μm. Since WASP-52 is a moderately active (log(Lx/Lbol)=-4.7) star, we correct the transit light curves for the effect of stellar activity using groundbased photometric monitoring data from the All-sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) and Tennessee State University's Automatic Imaging Telescope. We bin the data in 38 spectrophotometric light curves from 0.29 to 4.5 μm and measure the transit depths to a median precision of 90 ppm. We compare the transmission spectrum to a grid of forward atmospheric models and find that our results are consistent with a cloudy spectrum and evidence of sodium at 2.3σ confidence, but we find no observable evidence of potassium absorption even in the narrowest spectroscopic channel. We find that the optical transmission spectrum of WASP-52b is similar to that of the well-studied inflated hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b, which has comparable surface gravity, equilibrium temperature, mass, radius, and stellar irradiation levels. At longer wavelengths, however, the best-fitting models for WASP-52b and HAT-P-1b predict quite dissimilar properties, which could be confirmed with observations at wavelengths longer than ~1 μm. The identification of planets with common atmospheric properties and similar system parameters will be insightful for comparative atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope.
KW - Atmospheres - planets and satellites
KW - Composition - planets and satellites
KW - Individual (WASP-52b)
KW - Planets and satellites
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-3881/AAEE89
DO - 10.3847/1538-3881/AAEE89
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090411077
VL - 156
JO - Astronomical Journal
JF - Astronomical Journal
SN - 0004-6256
IS - 6
M1 - aaee89
ER -