The HUSTLE Program: The UV to Near-infrared HST WFC3/UVIS G280 Transmission Spectrum of WASP-127b

Ultraviolet wavelengths offer unique insights into aerosols in exoplanetary atmospheres. However, only a handful of exoplanets have been observed in the ultraviolet to date. Here, we present the ultraviolet-visible transmission spectrum of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-127b. We observed one transit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astronomical journal 2025-01, Vol.169 (1), p.23
Main Authors: Boehm, V. A., Lewis, N. K., Fairman, C. E., Moran, S. E., Gascón, C., Wakeford, H. R., Alam, M. K., Alderson, L., Barstow, J., Batalha, N. E., Grant, D., López-Morales, M., MacDonald, R. J., Marley, Mark S., Ohno, K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerosols
Atmospheric composition
Broadband
Exoplanet atmospheres
Exoplanets
Extrasolar gaseous giant planets
Extrasolar planets
Gas giant planets
High altitude
Hubble Space Telescope
Jupiter
Near infrared radiation
Opacity
Planetary atmospheres
Space telescopes
Transit
Transmission spectroscopy
Ultraviolet astronomy
Ultraviolet spectra
Wavelengths
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Summary:Ultraviolet wavelengths offer unique insights into aerosols in exoplanetary atmospheres. However, only a handful of exoplanets have been observed in the ultraviolet to date. Here, we present the ultraviolet-visible transmission spectrum of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-127b. We observed one transit of WASP-127b with WFC3/UVIS G280 as part of the Hubble Ultraviolet-optical Survey of Transiting Legacy Exoplanets, obtaining a transmission spectrum from 200 to 800 nm. Our reductions yielded a broadband transit depth precision of 91 ppm and a median precision of 240 ppm across 59 spectral channels. Our observations are suggestive of a high-altitude cloud layer with forward modeling showing they are composed of submicron particles and retrievals indicating a high-opacity patchy cloud. While our UVIS/G280 data only offer weak evidence for Na, adding archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFC3/IR and STIS observations raises the overall Na detection significance to 4.1 σ . Our work demonstrates the capabilities of HST WFC3/UVIS G280 observations to probe the aerosols and atmospheric composition of transiting hot Jupiters with comparable precision to HST STIS.
ISSN:0004-6256
1538-3881
DOI:10.3847/1538-3881/ad8dde