Bibcode
Feinstein, Adina D.; Radica, Michael; Welbanks, Luis; Murray, Catriona Anne; Ohno, Kazumasa; Coulombe, Louis-Philippe; Espinoza, Néstor; Bean, Jacob L.; Teske, Johanna K.; Benneke, Björn; Line, Michael R.; Rustamkulov, Zafar; Saba, Arianna; Tsiaras, Angelos; Barstow, Joanna K.; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Gao, Peter; Knutson, Heather A.; MacDonald, Ryan J.; Mikal-Evans, Thomas; Rackham, Benjamin V.; Taylor, Jake; Parmentier, Vivien; Batalha, Natalie M.; Berta-Thompson, Zachory K.; Carter, Aarynn L.; Changeat, Quentin; dos Santos, Leonardo A.; Gibson, Neale P.; Goyal, Jayesh M.; Kreidberg, Laura; López-Morales, Mercedes; Lothringer, Joshua D.; Miguel, Yamila; Molaverdikhani, Karan; Moran, Sarah E.; Morello, Giuseppe; Mukherjee, Sagnick; Sing, David K.; Stevenson, Kevin B.; Wakeford, Hannah R.; Ahrer, Eva-Maria; Alam, Munazza K.; Alderson, Lili; Allen, Natalie H.; Batalha, Natasha E.; Bell, Taylor J.; Blecic, Jasmina; Brande, Jonathan; Caceres, Claudio; Casewell, S. L.; Chubb, Katy L.; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Crouzet, Nicolas; Cubillos, Patricio E.; Decin, Leen; Désert, Jean-Michel; Harrington, Joseph; Heng, Kevin; Henning, Thomas; Iro, Nicolas; Kempton, Eliza M. -R.; Kendrew, Sarah; Kirk, James; Krick, Jessica; Lagage, Pierre-Olivier; Lendl, Monika; Mancini, Luigi; Mansfield, Megan; May, E. M.; Mayne, N. J.; Nikolov, Nikolay K.; Palle, Enric; Petit dit de la Roche, Dominique J. M.; Piaulet, Caroline; Powell, Diana; Redfield, Seth; Rogers, Laura K.; Roman, Michael T.; Roy, Pierre-Alexis; Nixon, Matthew C.; Schlawin, Everett; Tan, Xianyu; Tremblin, P.; Turner, Jake D.; Venot, Olivia; Waalkes, William C.; Wheatley, Peter J.; Zhang, Xi
Bibliographical reference
Nature
Advertised on:
2
2023
Journal
Citations
104
Refereed citations
93
Description
The Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b has been the subject of extensive efforts to determine its atmospheric properties using transmission spectroscopy1-4. However, these efforts have been hampered by modelling degeneracies between composition and cloud properties that are caused by limited data quality5-9. Here we present the transmission spectrum of WASP-39b obtained using the Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy (SOSS) mode of the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument on the JWST. This spectrum spans 0.6-2.8 μm in wavelength and shows several water-absorption bands, the potassium resonance doublet and signatures of clouds. The precision and broad wavelength coverage of NIRISS/SOSS allows us to break model degeneracies between cloud properties and the atmospheric composition of WASP-39b, favouring a heavy-element enhancement (`metallicity') of about 10-30 times the solar value, a sub-solar carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio and a solar-to-super-solar potassium-to-oxygen (K/O) ratio. The observations are also best explained by wavelength-dependent, non-grey clouds with inhomogeneous coverageof the planet's terminator.
Related projects
Exoplanets and Astrobiology
The search for life in the universe has been driven by recent discoveries of planets around other stars (known as exoplanets), becoming one of the most active fields in modern astrophysics. The growing number of new exoplanets discovered in recent years and the recent advance on the study of their atmospheres are not only providing new valuable
Enric
Pallé Bago