Abstract
Context. During primary transits, the spectral signatures of exoplanet atmospheres can be measured using transmission spectroscopy. We can obtain information on the upper atmosphere of these planets by investigating the exoplanets’ excess sodium absorption in the optical region. However, a number of factors can affect the observed sodium absorption signature. We present a detailed model correcting for systematic biases to yield an accurate depth for the sodium absorption in HD 189733b.
Highlights
The first transiting hot Jupiter, HD 209458b, was discovered more than a decade ago (Charbonneau et al 2000)
In this work we applied a new approach based on the changing radial velocity of the exoplanet
We modeled a combination of three main effects on each data set and extracted some information about the exo-atmospheric sodium
Summary
The first transiting hot Jupiter, HD 209458b, was discovered more than a decade ago (Charbonneau et al 2000). Since a few thousand transiting exoplanets have been detected with various transit surveys from ground-based facilities (e.g., Hartman et al 2004; Pollacco et al 2006), and from space (e.g., Borucki et al 2010; Koch et al 2010) This has provided a fertile ground for studying the exoplanet population from a global point of view (Sing et al 2016), and has opened a window to a deeper characterization of planetary systems. If the planet has an atmosphere, an additional fraction of the stellar light can be absorbed by the materials present in its atmosphere Since this absorption takes place at discrete wavelengths, the planet size and the transit light-curve depth will appear larger or smaller, depending on the wavelength of the observation. The variations in the transit depth as a function of wavelength can reveal the presence of different atomic and molecular species (e.g., Charbonneau et al 2002; Tinetti et al 2007; Vidal-Madjar et al 2011; Crossfield et al 2011; Désert et al 2009; Hoeijmakers et al 2015; Nikolov et al 2015), clouds (Gibson et al 2013; Kreidberg et al 2014), and hazes (Pont et al 2013)
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