Exoplanetology: Exoplanets & Exomoons

Titan Solar Occultation Observations Reveal Transit Spectra of a Hazy World

By Keith Cowing
astro-ph.EP
June 12, 2014
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Titan Solar Occultation Observations Reveal Transit Spectra of a Hazy World

High altitude clouds and hazes are integral to understanding exoplanet observations, and are proposed to explain observed featureless transit spectra.

However, it is difficult to make inferences from these data because of the need to disentangle effects of gas absorption from haze extinction. Here, we turn to the quintessential hazy world — Titan — to clarify how high altitude hazes influence transit spectra. We use solar occultation observations of Titan’s atmosphere from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to generate transit spectra. Data span 0.88-5 microns at a resolution of 12-18 nm, with uncertainties typically smaller than 1%. Our approach exploits symmetry between occultations and transits, producing transit radius spectra that inherently include the effects of haze multiple scattering, refraction, and gas absorption. We use a simple model of haze extinction to explore how Titan’s haze affects its transit spectrum. Our spectra show strong methane absorption features, and weaker features due to other gases.

Most importantly, the data demonstrate that high altitude hazes can severely limit the atmospheric depths probed by transit spectra, bounding observations to pressures smaller than 0.1-10 mbar, depending on wavelength. Unlike the usual assumption made when modeling and interpreting transit observations of potentially hazy worlds, the slope set by haze in our spectra is not flat, and creates a variation in transit height whose magnitude is comparable to those from the strongest gaseous absorption features. These findings have important consequences for interpreting future exoplanet observations, including those from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Tyler D. Robinson, Luca Maltagliati, Mark S. Marley, Jonathan J. Fortney (Submitted on 12 Jun 2014)

Comments: In press at PNAS; 6 pages, 5 figures; data available via this http URL

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1403473111

Cite as: arXiv:1406.3314 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1406.3314v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version) Submission history

From: Tyler Robinson [v1] Thu, 12 Jun 2014 18:42:41 GMT (335kb,D)

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻