14 research outputs found
Measuring adherence to antiretroviral therapy in northern Tanzania: feasibility and acceptability of the Medication Event Monitoring System
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Identification of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key chemical species that is found in a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In the context of exoplanets, CO2 is an indicator of the metal enrichment (that is, elements heavier than helium, also called ‘metallicity’)1–3, and thus the formation processes of the primary atmospheres of hot gas giants4–6. It is also one of the most promising species to detect in the secondary atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets7–9. Previous photometric measurements of transiting planets with the Spitzer Space Telescope have given hints of the presence of CO2, but have not yielded definitive detections owing to the lack of unambiguous spectroscopic identification10–12. Here we present the detection of CO2 in the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-39b from transmission spectroscopy observations obtained with JWST as part of the Early Release Science programme13,14. The data used in this study span 3.0–5.5 micrometres in wavelength and show a prominent CO2 absorption feature at 4.3 micrometres (26-sigma significance). The overall spectrum is well matched by one-dimensional, ten-times solar metallicity models that assume radiative–convective–thermochemical equilibrium and have moderate cloud opacity. These models predict that the atmosphere should have water, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide in addition to CO2, but little methane. Furthermore, we also tentatively detect a small absorption feature near 4.0 micrometres that is not reproduced by these models
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Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec G395H
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Research via the DOI in this recordData Availability:
The data used in this paper are associated with JWST program ERS 1366 (observation #4) and
are available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (https://mast.stsci.edu). Science
data processing version (SDP_VER) 2022_2a generated the uncalibrated data that we
downloaded from MAST. We used JWST Calibration Pipeline software version (CAL_VER)
1.5.3 with modifications described in the text. We used calibration reference data from context
(CRDS_CTX) 0916, except as noted in the text. All the data and models presented in this
publication can be found at 10.5281/zenodo.7185300.Code Availability:
The codes used in this publication to extract, reduce and analyze the data are as follows;
STScI JWST Calibration pipeline45 (https://github.com/spacetelescope/jwst), Eureka!53
(https://eurekadocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), ExoTiC-JEDI47 (https://github.com/ExoTiC/ExoTiC-JEDI), juliet71 (https://juliet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), Tiberius15,49,50,
transitspectroscopy51 (https://github.com/nespinoza/transitspectroscopy). In addition, these
made use of batman65 (http://lkreidberg.github.io/batman/docs/html/index.html), celerite86
(https://celerite.readthedocs.io/en/stable/), chromatic (https://zkbt.github.io/chromatic/),
Dynesty72 (https://dynesty.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html), emcee69
(https://emcee.readthedocs.io/en/stable/), exoplanet83 (https://docs.exoplanet.codes/en/latest/),
ExoTEP75–77, ExoTHETyS79 (https://github.com/ucl-exoplanets/ExoTETHyS), ExoTiCISM57 (https://github.com/Exo-TiC/ExoTiC-ISM), ExoTiC-LD58 (https://exoticld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), george68 (https://george.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) JAX82
(https://jax.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), LMFIT70 (https://lmfit.github.io/lmfit-py/),
Pylightcurve78 (https://github.com/ucl-exoplanets/pylightcurve), Pymc3138
(https://docs.pymc.io/en/v3/index.html) and Starry84 (https://starry.readthedocs.io/en/latest/),
each of which use the standard python libraries astropy139,140, matplotlib141, numpy142,
pandas143, scipy64 and xarray144. The atmospheric models used to fit the data can be found at
ATMO[Tremblin2015,Drummond2016,Goyal2018,Goyal2020]88–91, PHOENIX92–94,
PICASO98,99 (https://natashabatalha.github.io/picaso/), Virga98,107
(https://natashabatalha.github.io/virga/), and gCMCRT115
(https://github.com/ELeeAstro/gCMCRT).Measuring the abundances of carbon and oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres is considered a crucial avenue for unlocking the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. Access to an exoplanet’s chemical inventory requires high precision observations, often inferred from individual molecular detections with low-resolution space-based and high-resolution ground-based facilities. Here we report the medium-resolution (R≈600) transmission spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere between 3–5 μm covering multiple absorption features for the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b, obtained with JWST NIRSpec G395H. Our observations achieve 1.46×
photon precision, providing an average transit depth uncertainty of 221 ppm per spectroscopic bin, and present minimal impacts from systematic effects. We detect significant absorption from CO2 (28.5σ
) and H2O (21.5σ
), and identify SO2 as the source of absorption at 4.1 μ
m (4.8σ
). Best-fit atmospheric models range between 3×
and 10×
solar metallicity, with sub-solar to solar C/O ratios. These results, including the detection of SO2, underscore the importance of characterising the chemistry in exoplanet atmospheres, and showcase NIRSpec G395H as an excellent mode for time series observations over this critical wavelength range.Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)UKR
Identification of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key chemical species that is found in a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In the context of exoplanets, CO2 is an indicator of the metal enrichment (that is, elements heavier than helium, also called ‘metallicity’), and thus the formation processes of the primary atmospheres of hot gas giants. It is also one of the most promising species to detect in the secondary atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets. Previous photometric measurements of transiting planets with the Spitzer Space Telescope have given hints of the presence of CO2, but have not yielded definitive detections owing to the lack of unambiguous spectroscopic identification. Here we present the detection of CO2 in the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-39b from transmission spectroscopy observations obtained with JWST as part of the Early Release Science programme. The data used in this study span 3.0–5.5 micrometres in wavelength and show a prominent CO2 absorption feature at 4.3 micrometres (26-sigma significance). The overall spectrum is well matched by one-dimensional, ten-times solar metallicity models that assume radiative–convective–thermochemical equilibrium and have moderate cloud opacity. These models predict that the atmosphere should have water, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide in addition to CO2, but little methane. Furthermore, we also tentatively detect a small absorption feature near 4.0 micrometres that is not reproduced by these models
Nightside clouds and disequilibrium chemistry on the hot Jupiter WASP-43b
This is the author accepted manuscript.Data Availability:
The data used in this paper are associated with JWST DD-ERS program 1366 (PIs Batalha,
Bean, and Stevenson; observation 11) and are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive
for Space Telescopes (https://mast.stsci.edu). Additional intermediate and final results from this work are archived on Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10525170Hot Jupiters are among the best-studied exoplanets, but it is still poorly understood how their
chemical composition and cloud properties vary with longitude. Theoretical models predict
that clouds may condense on the nightside and that molecular abundances can be driven out
of equilibrium by zonal winds. Here we report a phase-resolved emission spectrum of the hot
Jupiter WASP-43b measured from 5–12 µm with JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
The spectra reveal a large day–night temperature contrast (with average brightness temperatures of 1524 ± 35 and 863 ± 23 Kelvin, respectively) and evidence for water absorption at
all orbital phases. Comparisons with three-dimensional atmospheric models show that both
the phase curve shape and emission spectra strongly suggest the presence of nightside clouds
which become optically thick to thermal emission at pressures greater than ∼100 mbar. The
dayside is consistent with a cloudless atmosphere above the mid-infrared photosphere. Contrary to expectations from equilibrium chemistry but consistent with disequilibrium kinetics
models, methane is not detected on the nightside (2σ upper limit of 1–6 parts per million,
depending on model assumptions).NASAEuropean Research Council (ERC)NSFNHFP Sagan Fellowship ProgramAustrian Science Fund (FWF)Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)KU LeuvenEuropean Union Horizon 2020FWOANRCentre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES
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Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec PRISM.
Transmission spectroscopy1-3 of exoplanets has revealed signatures of water vapour, aerosols and alkali metals in a few dozen exoplanet atmospheres4,5. However, these previous inferences with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes were hindered by the observations' relatively narrow wavelength range and spectral resolving power, which precluded the unambiguous identification of other chemical species-in particular the primary carbon-bearing molecules6,7. Here we report a broad-wavelength 0.5-5.5 µm atmospheric transmission spectrum of WASP-39b8, a 1,200 K, roughly Saturn-mass, Jupiter-radius exoplanet, measured with the JWST NIRSpec's PRISM mode9 as part of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team Program10-12. We robustly detect several chemical species at high significance, including Na (19σ), H2O (33σ), CO2 (28σ) and CO (7σ). The non-detection of CH4, combined with a strong CO2 feature, favours atmospheric models with a super-solar atmospheric metallicity. An unanticipated absorption feature at 4 µm is best explained by SO2 (2.7σ), which could be a tracer of atmospheric photochemistry. These observations demonstrate JWST's sensitivity to a rich diversity of exoplanet compositions and chemical processes