Bibcode
Colón, Knicole D.; Ford, Eric B.; Redfield, Seth; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Shabram, Megan; Deeg, H. J.; Mahadevan, Suvrath
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 419, Issue 3, pp. 2233-2250.
Advertised on:
1
2012
Citations
38
Refereed citations
33
Description
We report observations of HD 80606 using the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio
Canarias and the Optical System for Imaging and low Resolution
Integrated Spectroscopy (OSIRIS) tunable filter imager. We acquired very
high precision, narrow-band photometry in four bandpasses around the K I
absorption feature during the 2010 January transit of HD 80606b and
during out-of-transit observations conducted in 2010 January and April.
We obtained differential photometric precisions of ˜2.08 ×
10-4 for the in-transit flux ratio measured at 769.91 nm,
which probes the K I line core. We find no significant difference in the
in-transit flux ratio between observations at 768.76 and 769.91 nm. Yet,
we find a difference of ˜8.09 ± 2.88 ×
10-4 between these observations and observations at a longer
wavelength that probes the K I wing (777.36 nm). While the presence of
red noise in the transit data has a non-negligible effect on the
uncertainties in the flux ratio, the 777.36-769.91 nm colour during
transit shows no effects from red noise and also indicates a significant
colour change, with a mean value of ˜8.99 ± 0.62 ×
10-4. This large change in the colour is equivalent to a
˜4.2 per cent change in the apparent planetary radius with
wavelength, which is much larger than the atmospheric scaleheight. This
implies the observations probed the atmosphere at very low pressures as
well as a dramatic change in the pressure at which the slant optical
depth reaches unity between ˜770 and 777 nm. We hypothesize that
the excess absorption may be due to K I in a high-speed wind being
driven from the exoplanet's exosphere. We discuss the viability of this
and alternative interpretations, including stellar limb darkening,
star-spots and effects from Earth's atmosphere. We strongly encourage
follow-up observations of HD 80606b to confirm the signal measured here.
Finally, we discuss the future prospects for exoplanet characterization
using tunable filter spectrophotometry.