A Measurement of the Water Abundance in the Atmosphere of the Hot Jupiter WASP-43b with High-resolution Cross-correlation Spectroscopy
Measuring the abundances of carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules has been a primary focus in studying the atmospheres of hot Jupiters, as doing so can help constrain the carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio. The C/O ratio can help reveal the evolution and formation pathways of hot Jupiters and provide a strong understanding of the atmospheric composition.
In the last decade, high-resolution spectral analyses have become increasingly useful in measuring precise abundances of several carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules. This allows for a more precise constraint of the C/O ratio. We present four transits of the hot Jupiter WASP-43b observed between 1.45 − 2.45 μm with the high-resolution Immersion GRating InfraRed Spectrometer (IGRINS) on the Gemini-S telescope.
We detected H2O at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 3.51. We tested for the presence of CH4, CO, and CO2, but we did not detect these carbon-bearing species. We ran a retrieval for all four molecules and obtained a water abundance of log10(H2O)=−2.24+0.57−0.48. We obtained an upper limit on the C/O ratio of C/O < 0.95. These findings are consistent with previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Dare Bartelt, Megan Weiner Mansfield, Michael R. Line, Vivien Parmentier, Luis Welbanks, Elspeth K. H. Lee, Jorge Sanchez, Arjun B. Savel, Peter C. B. Smith, Emily Rauscher, Joost P. Wardenier
Comments: 11 pages, 6 figures
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2411.17923 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2411.17923v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.17923
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Submission history
From: Dare Bartelt
[v1] Tue, 26 Nov 2024 22:34:05 UTC (2,447 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.17923
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,
