Wakeford, HR;
Stevenson, KB;
Lewis, NK;
Sing, DK;
López-Morales, M;
Marley, M;
Kataria, T;
... Sanz-Forcada, J; + view all
(2017)
HST PanCET Program: A Cloudy Atmosphere for the Promising JWST Target WASP-101b.
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
, 835
(1)
10.3847/2041-8213/835/1/L12.
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Abstract
We present results from the first observations of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasury program for WASP-101b, a highly inflated hot Jupiter and one of the community targets proposed for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Science (ERS) program. From a single HST Wide Field Camera 3 observation, we find that the near-infrared transmission spectrum of WASP-101b contains no significant H2O absorption features and we rule out a clear atmosphere at 13σ. Therefore, WASP-101b is not an optimum target for a JWST ERS program aimed at observing strong molecular transmission features. We compare WASP-101b to the well-studied and nearly identical hot Jupiter WASP-31b. These twin planets show similar temperature–pressure profiles and atmospheric features in the near-infrared. We suggest exoplanets in the same parameter space as WASP-101b and WASP-31b will also exhibit cloudy transmission spectral features. For future HST exoplanet studies, our analysis also suggests that a lower count limit needs to be exceeded per pixel on the detector in order to avoid unwanted instrumental systematics.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | HST PanCET Program: A Cloudy Atmosphere for the Promising JWST Target WASP-101b |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3847/2041-8213/835/1/L12 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/835/1/L12 |
| Additional information: | © 2017 The American Astronomical Society. |
| Keywords: | planets and satellites: atmospheres; planets and satellites: individual (WASP-101b) ; techniques: spectroscopic |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1540029 |
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