Detection of carbon monoxide’s 4.6 micron fundamental band structure in WASP-39b’s atmosphere with JWST NIRSpec G395H
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Carbon monoxide (CO) is predicted to be the dominant carbon-bearing molecule in giant planet atmospheres and, along with water, is important for discerning the oxygen and therefore carbon-to-oxygen ratio of these planets. The fundamental absorption mode of CO has a broad, double-branched structure composed of many individual absorption lines from 4.3 to 5.1 μm, which can now be spectroscopically measured with JWST. Here we present a technique for detecting the rotational sub-band structure of CO at medium resolution with the NIRSpec G395H instrument. We use a single transit observation of the hot Jupiter WASP-39b from the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science (JTEC ERS) program at the native resolution of the instrument (R ∼ 2700) to resolve the CO absorption structure. We robustly detect absorption by CO, with an increase in transit depth of 264 ± 68 ppm, in agreement with the predicted CO contribution from the best-fit model at low resolution. This detection confirms our theoretical expectations that CO is the dominant carbon-bearing molecule in WASP-39b's atmosphere and further supports the conclusions of low C/O and supersolar metallicities presented in the JTEC ERS papers for WASP-39b.
Date Issued
2023-05-20
Date Acceptance
2023-04-23
Citation
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2023, 949 (1), pp.1-8
ISSN
2041-8205
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Start Page
1
End Page
8
Journal / Book Title
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Volume
949
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Original content from this work may be used under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further
distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title
of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Original content from this work may be used under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further
distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title
of the work, journal citation and DOI.
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/acd544
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
L15
Date Publish Online
2023-05-23