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Spake, Jessica J.; Sing, David K.; Wakeford, Hannah R.; Nikolov, Nikolay; Mikal-Evans, Thomas; Deming, Drake; Barstow, Joanna K.; Anderson, David R.; Carter, Aarynn L.; Gillon, Michael; Goyal, Jayesh M.; Hebrard, Guillaume; Hellier, Coel; Kataria, Tiffany; Lam, Kristine W. F.; Triaud, A .H. M. J. and Wheatley, Peter J.
(2021).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3116
Abstract
The chemical abundances of exoplanet atmospheres may provide valuable information about the bulk compositions, formation pathways, and evolutionary histories of planets. Exoplanets with large, relatively cloud-free atmospheres, and which orbit bright stars provide the best opportunities for accurate abundance measurements. For this reason, we measured the transmission spectrum of the bright (V∼10.2), large (), sub-Saturn mass (
) exoplanet WASP-127b across the near-UV to near-infrared wavelength range (0.3–5 μm), using the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. Our results show a feature-rich transmission spectrum, with absorption from Na,
, and
, and wavelength-dependent scattering from small-particle condensates. We ran two types of atmospheric retrieval models: one enforcing chemical equilibrium, and the other which fit the abundances freely. Our retrieved abundances at chemical equilibrium for Na, O and C are all super-solar, with abundances relative to solar values of
,
, and
respectively. Despite giving conflicting C/O ratios, both retrievals gave super-solar
volume mixing ratios, which adds to the likelihood that WASP-127b’s bulk metallicity is super-solar, since
abundance is highly sensitive to atmospheric metallicity. We detect water at a significance of 13.7 σ. Our detection of Na is in agreement with previous ground-based detections, though we find a much lower abundance, and we also do not find evidence for Li or K despite increased sensitivity. In the future, spectroscopy with JWST will be able to constrain WASP-127b’s C/O ratio, and may reveal the formation history of this metal-enriched, highly observable exoplanet.
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About
- Item ORO ID
- 73251
- Item Type
- Journal Item
- ISSN
- 1365-2966
- Project Funding Details
-
Funded Project Name Project ID Funding Body Not Set HST-GO-14619 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) - Keywords
- techniques: spectroscopic, planets and satellites: atmospheres, stars: individual: WASP-127
- Academic Unit or School
-
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Physical Sciences
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) - Copyright Holders
- © 2020 The Authors
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