The Astrophysical Journal Letters (Jan 2023)
Detection of Carbon Monoxide’s 4.6 Micron Fundamental Band Structure in WASP-39b’s Atmosphere with JWST NIRSpec G395H
- David Grant,
- Joshua D. Lothringer,
- Hannah R. Wakeford,
- Munazza K. Alam,
- Lili Alderson,
- Jacob L. Bean,
- Björn Benneke,
- Jean-Michel Désert,
- Tansu Daylan,
- Laura Flagg,
- Renyu Hu,
- Julie Inglis,
- James Kirk,
- Laura Kreidberg,
- Mercedes López-Morales,
- Luigi Mancini,
- Thomas Mikal-Evans,
- Karan Molaverdikhani,
- Enric Palle,
- Benjamin V. Rackham,
- Seth Redfield,
- Kevin B. Stevenson,
- Jeff A. Valenti,
- Nicole L. Wallack,
- Keshav Aggarwal,
- Eva-Maria Ahrer,
- Ian J. M. Crossfield,
- Nicolas Crouzet,
- Nicolas Iro,
- Nikolay K. Nikolov,
- Peter J. Wheatley,
- JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community ERS team
Affiliations
- David Grant
- ORCiD
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK ; [email protected]
- Joshua D. Lothringer
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics, Utah Valley University , Orem, UT 84058, USA
- Hannah R. Wakeford
- ORCiD
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK ; [email protected]
- Munazza K. Alam
- ORCiD
- Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science , Washington, DC, USA
- Lili Alderson
- ORCiD
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK ; [email protected]
- Jacob L. Bean
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Chicago , Chicago, IL, USA
- Björn Benneke
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Université de Montréal , Montreal, QC, Canada
- Jean-Michel Désert
- ORCiD
- Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Tansu Daylan
- ORCiD
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University , Princeton, NJ, USA
- Laura Flagg
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy and Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University , Ithaca, NY, USA
- Renyu Hu
- ORCiD
- Astrophysics Section, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA, USA; Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA, USA
- Julie Inglis
- ORCiD
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA, USA
- James Kirk
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics, Imperial College London , London, UK
- Laura Kreidberg
- ORCiD
- Max Planck Institute for Astronomy , Heidelberg, Germany
- Mercedes López-Morales
- ORCiD
- Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian , Cambridge, MA, USA
- Luigi Mancini
- ORCiD
- Max Planck Institute for Astronomy , Heidelberg, Germany; Department of Physics, University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” Rome, Italy; INAF—Turin Astrophysical Observatory , Pino Torinese, Italy
- Thomas Mikal-Evans
- ORCiD
- Max Planck Institute for Astronomy , Heidelberg, Germany
- Karan Molaverdikhani
- ORCiD
- University Observatory Munich , Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany; Exzellenzcluster Origins , Garching, Germany
- Enric Palle
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) , E-38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Deptartamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) , E-38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Benjamin V. Rackham
- ORCiD
- Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
- Seth Redfield
- ORCiD
- Astronomy Department and Van Vleck Observatory, Wesleyan University , Middletown, CT, USA
- Kevin B. Stevenson
- ORCiD
- Johns Hopkins APL , Laurel, MD, USA
- Jeff A. Valenti
- Space Telescope Science Institute , Baltimore, MD, USA
- Nicole L. Wallack
- ORCiD
- Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science , Washington, DC, USA
- Keshav Aggarwal
- ORCiD
- Indian Institute of Technology Indore , India
- Eva-Maria Ahrer
- ORCiD
- Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability, University of Warwick , Coventry, UK; Department of Physics, University of Warwick , Coventry, UK
- Ian J. M. Crossfield
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas , Lawrence, KS, USA
- Nicolas Crouzet
- ORCiD
- Leiden Observatory, University of Leiden , Leiden, The Netherlands
- Nicolas Iro
- ORCiD
- Institute for Astrophysics, University of Vienna , Vienna, Austria
- Nikolay K. Nikolov
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , Baltimore, MD, USA
- Peter J. Wheatley
- ORCiD
- Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability, University of Warwick , Coventry, UK; Department of Physics, University of Warwick , Coventry, UK
- JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community ERS team
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK ; [email protected]
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/acd544
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 949,
no. 1
p. L15
Abstract
Carbon monoxide (CO) is predicted to be the dominant carbon-bearing molecule in giant planet atmospheres and, along with water, is important for discerning the oxygen and therefore carbon-to-oxygen ratio of these planets. The fundamental absorption mode of CO has a broad, double-branched structure composed of many individual absorption lines from 4.3 to 5.1 μ m, which can now be spectroscopically measured with JWST. Here we present a technique for detecting the rotational sub-band structure of CO at medium resolution with the NIRSpec G395H instrument. We use a single transit observation of the hot Jupiter WASP-39b from the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science (JTEC ERS) program at the native resolution of the instrument ( R ∼ 2700) to resolve the CO absorption structure. We robustly detect absorption by CO, with an increase in transit depth of 264 ± 68 ppm, in agreement with the predicted CO contribution from the best-fit model at low resolution. This detection confirms our theoretical expectations that CO is the dominant carbon-bearing molecule in WASP-39b’s atmosphere and further supports the conclusions of low C/O and supersolar metallicities presented in the JTEC ERS papers for WASP-39b.
Keywords
