DIRECT MEASURE OF RADIATIVE AND DYNAMICAL PROPERTIES OF AN EXOPLANET ATMOSPHERE
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Wit_2016_ApJL_820_L33.pdf
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Author(s)
Lewis, Nikole K.
Langton, Jonathan
Laughlin, Gregory
Deming, Drake
Batygin, Konstantin
Fortney, Jonathan J.
de Wit, Julien
Date Issued
March 2016
Journal
Astrophysical Journal. Letters
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Citation
Wit, Julien de, et al. “DIRECT MEASURE OF RADIATIVE AND DYNAMICAL PROPERTIES OF AN EXOPLANET ATMOSPHERE.” The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 820, no. 2, Mar. 2016, p. L33. © 2016 The American Astronomical Society.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Two decades after the discovery of 51 Peg b, the formation processes and atmospheres of short-period gas giants remain poorly understood. Observations of eccentric systems provide key insights on those topics as they can illuminate how a planet's atmosphere responds to changes in incident flux. We report here the analysis of multi-day multi-channel photometry of the eccentric (e ∼ 0.93) hot Jupiter HD 80606 b obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The planet's extreme eccentricity combined with the long coverage and exquisite precision of new periastron-passage observations allow us to break the degeneracy between the radiative and dynamical timescales of HD 80606 b's atmosphere and constrain its global thermal response. Our analysis reveals that the atmospheric layers probed heat rapidly (∼4 hr radiative timescale) from < 500 to 1400 K as they absorb ∼ 20% of the incoming stellar flux during the periastron passage, while the planet's rotation period is 93[subscript -35][superscript +85] hr, which exceeds the predicted pseudo-synchronous period (40 hr).
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8205/820/2/L33
