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Confirmation of iron emission lines and nondetection of TiO on the dayside of KELT-9b with MAROON-X
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Kasper, David, Bean, Jacob L., Line, Michael R., Seifahrt, Andreas, Stürmer, Julian, Pino, Lorenzo, Désert, Jean-Michel and Brogi, Matteo (2021) Confirmation of iron emission lines and nondetection of TiO on the dayside of KELT-9b with MAROON-X. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 921 (1). L18. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ac30e1 ISSN 2041-8213.
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WRAP-Confirmation-iron-emission-lines-nondetection-TiO-dayside-KELT-0b-MAROON-X-2021.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (585Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac30e1
Abstract
We present dayside thermal emission observations of the hottest exoplanet KELT-9b using the new MAROON-X spectrograph. We detect atomic lines in emission with a signal-to-noise ratio of 10 using cross-correlation with binary masks. The detection of emission lines confirms the presence of a thermal inversion in KELT-9b’s atmosphere. We also use M-dwarf stellar masks to search for TiO, which has recently been invoked to explain the unusual Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 spectrum of the planet. We find that the KELT-9b atmosphere is inconsistent with the M-dwarf masks. Furthermore, we use an atmospheric retrieval approach to place an upper limit on the TiO volume mixing ratio of 10−8.5 (at 99% confidence). This upper limit is inconsistent with the models used to match the WFC3 data, which require at least an order of magnitude more TiO, thus suggesting the need for an alternate explanation of the space-based data. Our retrieval results also strongly prefer an inverted temperature profile and atomic/ion abundances largely consistent with the expectations for a solar composition gas in thermochemical equilibrium. The exception is the retrieved abundance of Fe+, which is about 1–2 orders of magnitude greater than predictions. These results highlight the growing power of high-resolution spectrographs on large ground-based telescopes to characterize exoplanet atmospheres when used in combination with new retrieval techniques.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Physics | ||||||
SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Astrophysics, Cosmic physics, Extrasolar planets -- Atmopsheres, Planets -- Atmospheres | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | The Astrophysical Journal Letters | ||||||
Publisher: | The American Astronomical Society | ||||||
ISSN: | 2041-8213 | ||||||
Official Date: | 2 November 2021 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 921 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Article Number: | L18 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.3847/2041-8213/ac30e1 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 3 November 2021 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 5 November 2021 | ||||||
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