The Astronomical Journal (Jan 2025)
JWST-TST DREAMS: A Precise Water Abundance for Hot Jupiter WASP-17b from the NIRISS SOSS Transmission Spectrum
- Dana R. Louie,
- Elijah Mullens,
- Lili Alderson,
- Ana Glidden,
- Nikole K. Lewis,
- Hannah R. Wakeford,
- Natasha E. Batalha,
- Knicole D. Colón,
- Amélie Gressier,
- Douglas Long,
- Michael Radica,
- Néstor Espinoza,
- Jayesh Goyal,
- Ryan J. MacDonald,
- Erin M. May,
- Sara Seager,
- Kevin B. Stevenson,
- Jeff A. Valenti,
- Natalie H. Allen,
- Caleb I. Cañas,
- Ryan C. Challener,
- David Grant,
- Jingcheng Huang,
- Zifan Lin,
- Daniel Valentine,
- Mark Clampin,
- Marshall Perrin,
- Laurent Pueyo,
- Roeland P. van der Marel,
- C. Matt Mountain
Affiliations
- Dana R. Louie
- ORCiD
- Catholic University of America , Department of Physics, Washington, DC 20064, USA ; [email protected]; Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory (Code 667), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA; Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology II , NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
- Elijah Mullens
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy and Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University , 122 Sciences Drive, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
- Lili Alderson
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy and Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University , 122 Sciences Drive, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA; University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK
- Ana Glidden
- 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
- Nikole K. Lewis
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy and Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University , 122 Sciences Drive, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
- Hannah R. Wakeford
- ORCiD
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK
- Natasha E. Batalha
- ORCiD
- NASA Ames Research Center , MS 245-3, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
- Knicole D. Colón
- ORCiD
- Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory (Code 667), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
- Amélie Gressier
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Douglas Long
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Michael Radica
- ORCiD
- Institut Trottier de Recherche sur les Exoplanètes and Département de Physique, Université de Montréal , 1375 Avenue Thérèse-Lavoie-Roux, Montréal, QC H2V 0B3, Canada; Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Chicago , 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
- Néstor Espinoza
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA; William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Jayesh Goyal
- ORCiD
- School of Earth and Planetary Sciences (SEPS), National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) , HBNI, Odisha, India
- Ryan J. MacDonald
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan , 1085 S. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
- Erin M. May
- ORCiD
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory , 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, USA
- Sara Seager
- 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; Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
- Kevin B. Stevenson
- ORCiD
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory , 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, USA
- Jeff A. Valenti
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Natalie H. Allen
- ORCiD
- William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Caleb I. Cañas
- ORCiD
- Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory (Code 667), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
- Ryan C. Challener
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy and Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University , 122 Sciences Drive, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
- David Grant
- ORCiD
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK
- Jingcheng Huang
- ORCiD
- Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
- Zifan Lin
- ORCiD
- Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
- Daniel Valentine
- ORCiD
- University of Bristol , HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, UK
- Mark Clampin
- NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546, USA
- Marshall Perrin
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Laurent Pueyo
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Roeland P. van der Marel
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA; William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- C. Matt Mountain
- Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Suite 1475, Washington, DC 20004, USA
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ad9688
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 169,
no. 2
p. 86
Abstract
Water has proven to be ubiquitously detected in near-infrared (NIR) transmission spectroscopy observations of hot Jupiter atmospheres, including WASP-17b. However, previous analyses of WASP-17b’s atmosphere based upon Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer data could not constrain the water abundance, finding that subsolar, supersolar, and bimodal posterior distributions were all statistically valid. In this work, we observe one transit of the hot Jupiter WASP-17b using JWST’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) Single Object Slitless Spectroscopy (SOSS) mode. We analyze our data using three independent data analysis pipelines, finding excellent agreement between results. Our transmission spectrum shows multiple H _2 O absorption features and a flatter slope towards the optical than seen in previous HST observations. We analyze our spectrum using both PICASO + Virga forward models and free retrievals. POSEIDON retrievals provide a well-constrained supersolar log(H _2 O) abundance (−2.96 ${}_{-0.24}^{+0.31}$ ), breaking the degeneracy from the previous HST + Spitzer analysis. We verify our POSEIDON results with petitRADTRANS retrievals. Additionally, we constrain the abundance of log(H ^− ), −10.19 ${}_{-0.23}^{+0.30}$ , finding that our model including H ^− is preferred over our model without H ^− to 5.1 σ . Furthermore, we constrain the log(K) abundance (−8.07 ${}_{-0.52}^{+0.58}$ ) in WASP-17b’s atmosphere for the first time using space-based observations. Our abundance constraints demonstrate the power of NIRISS SOSS’s increased resolution, precision, and wavelength range to improve upon previous NIR space-based results. This work is part of a series of studies by our JWST Telescope Scientist Team (JWST-TST), in which we use Guaranteed Time Observations to perform Deep Reconnaissance of Exoplanet Atmospheres through Multi-instrument Spectroscopy (DREAMS).
Keywords
- Exoplanet atmospheres
- Transmission spectroscopy
- Hot Jupiters
- James Webb Space Telescope
- Exoplanet atmospheric composition
- Astronomy data analysis
