Journal
ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL
Volume 155, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aa9e4e
Keywords
planets and satellites: atmospheres; planets and satellites: individual (WASP-39b); techniques: spectroscopic
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7)/ERC grant [336792]
- Leverhulme Trust
- STFC
- Giacconi Fellowship at the Space Telescope Science Institute by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.
- [GO-14169]
- [GO-14260]
- STFC [1784036] Funding Source: UKRI
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WASP-39b is a hot Saturn-mass exoplanet with a predicted clear atmosphere based on observations in the optical and infrared. Here, we complete the transmission spectrum of the atmosphere with observations in the near-infrared (NIR) over three water absorption features with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) G102 (0.8-1.1 mu m) and G141 (1.1-1.7 mu m) spectroscopic grisms. We measure the predicted high-amplitude H2O feature centered at 1.4 mu m and the smaller amplitude features at 0.95 and 1.2 mu m, with a maximum water absorption amplitude of 2.4 planetary scale heights. We incorporate these new NIR measurements into previously published observational measurements to complete the transmission spectrum from 0.3 to 5 mu m. From these observed water features, combined with features in the optical and IR, we retrieve a well constrained temperature T-eq = 1030(20)(+30) K, and atmospheric metallicity 151(46) (+48) solar, which is relatively high with respect to the currently established mass-metallicity trends. This new measurement in the Saturn-mass range hints at further diversity in the planet formation process relative to our solar system giants.
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