Bibcode
Chen, G.; Pallé, E.; Nortmann, L.; Murgas, F.; Parviainen, H.; Nowak, G.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 600, id.L11, 6 pp.
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4
2017
Journal
Citations
43
Refereed citations
41
Description
We report the first detection of sodium absorption in the atmosphere of
the hot Jupiter WASP-52b. We observed one transit of WASP-52b with the
low-resolution Optical System for Imaging and
low-Intermediate-Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy (OSIRIS) at the 10.4
m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). The resulting transmission spectrum,
covering the wavelength range from 522 nm to 903 nm, is flat and
featureless, except for the significant narrow absorption signature at
the sodium doublet, which can be explained by an atmosphere in solar
composition with clouds at 1 mbar. A cloud-free atmosphere is
stringently ruled out. By assessing the absorption depths of sodium in
various bin widths, we find that temperature increases towards lower
atmospheric pressure levels, with a positive temperature gradient of
0.88 ± 0.65 K km-1, possibly indicative of upper
atmospheric heating and a temperature inversion.
The light curves are only vailable at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (http://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/600/L11
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