2018/11/02 by Munazza K. Alam, Nikolay Nikolov, Mercedes López-Morales +18 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Exoplanet #Hot Jupiter #Light curve #Optical telescope #Photometry (optics) #Planet #Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph #Spectrograph #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Transit (satellite) #astro-ph.EP
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-3881/aaee89
35 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in AJ
arxiv created 2018/11/02 · openalex created_date 2018/11/09 · openalex publication_date 2018/12/01 · arxiv updated 2018/12/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract 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 μ m. Since WASP-52 is a moderately active (log( L x / L bol ) = −4.7) star, we correct the transit light curves for the effect of stellar activity using ground-based 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 μ m 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 2.3 σ 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 μ m. 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 .