We present results from the first observations of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasury program for WASP-101b, a highly inflated hot Jupiter and one of the community targets proposed for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Science (ERS) program. From a single HST Wide Field Camera 3 observation, we find that the near-infrared transmission spectrum of WASP-101b contains no significant H2O absorption features and we rule out a clear atmosphere at 13 sigma. Therefore, WASP-101b is not an optimum target for a JWST ERS program aimed at observing strong molecular transmission features. We compare WASP-101b to the well-studied and nearly identical hot Jupiter WASP-31b. These twin planets show similar temperature-pressure profiles and atmospheric features in the near-infrared. We suggest exoplanets in the same parameter space as WASP-101b and WASP-31b will also exhibit cloudy transmission spectral features. For future HST exoplanet studies, our analysis also suggests that a lower count limit needs to be exceeded per pixel on the detector in order to avoid unwanted instrumental systematics.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/623095 |
| Date | 20 January 2017 |
| Creators | Wakeford, H. R., Stevenson, K. B., Lewis, N. K., Sing, D. K., López-Morales, M., Marley, M., Kataria, T., Mandell, A., Ballester, G. E., Barstow, J., Ben-Jaffel, L., Bourrier, V., Buchhave, L. A., Ehrenreich, D., Evans, T., García Muñoz, A., Henry, G., Knutson, H., Lavvas, P., Lecavelier des Etangs, A., Nikolov, N., Sanz-Forcada, J. |
| Contributors | Univ Arizona, Dept Planetary Sci, Univ Arizona, Lunar & Planetary Lab |
| Publisher | IOP PUBLISHING LTD |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. |
| Relation | http://stacks.iop.org/2041-8205/835/i=1/a=L12?key=crossref.52b2019220c4a7c110a517df8b5eff1c |
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