Extremely low-density exoplanets are tantalizing targets for atmospheric characterization because of their promisingly large signals in transmission spectroscopy. We present the first analysis of the atmosphere of the lowest-density gas giant currently known, HAT-P-67b. This inflated Saturn-mass exoplanet sits at the boundary between hot and ultrahot gas giants, where thermal dissociation of molecules begins to dominate atmospheric composition. We observed a transit of HAT-P-67b at high spectral resolution with CARMENES and searched for atomic and molecular species using cross-correlation and likelihood mapping. Furthermore, we explored potential atmospheric escape by targeting Hα and the metastable helium line. We detect Ca ii and Na i with significances of 13.2σ and 4.6σ, respectively. Unlike in several ultrahot Jupiters, we do not measure a day-to-night wind. The large line depths of Ca ii suggest that the upper atmosphere may be more ionized than models predict. We detect strong variability in Hα and the helium triplet during the observations. These signals suggest the possible presence of an extended planetary outflow that causes an early ingress and late egress. In the averaged transmission spectrum, we measure redshifted absorption at the ∼3.8% and ∼4.5% level in the Hα and He i triplet lines, respectively. From an isothermal Parker wind model, we derive a mass-loss rate of 𝑀˙∼10¹³ g s⁻¹ and an outflow temperature of T ∼ 9900 K. However, due to the lack of a longer out-of-transit baseline in our data, additional observations are needed to rule out stellar variability as the source of the Hα and He signals.
Transmission Spectroscopy of the Lowest-density Gas Giant: Metals and a Potential Extended Outflow in HAT-P-67b
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 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.
Acknowledgement
We thank the anonymous referee for providing a thoughtful report that improved the quality of this work. We are also grateful to Lisa Nortmann and the rest of the CARMENES Atmospheres Legacy Group, who kindly and swiftly offered their telescope time in the hope of observing a second transit of HAT-P-67b. We also thank the staff at Calar Alto Observatory, including Ignacio Vico for carrying out the observations, and Gilles Bergond for valuable help during our program. A.B.-A. gratefully acknowledges support from the Niels Bohr Foundation under the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. A.U. gratefully acknowledges grant PR2015-00511 from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports. This work is based on observations collected at the Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía (CAHA) at Calar Alto, operated jointly by Junta de Andalucía and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC). Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.
Facilities
CAO:3.5m/3.5 m telescope on Calar Alto. -
Software References
batman (Kreidberg 2015), corner (Foreman-Mackey 2016), emcee (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013), FastChem (Stock et al. 2018), HELIOS-K (Grimm et al. 2021), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), molecfit (Smette et al. 2015), numpy (Harris et al. 2020), p-winds (Dos Santos et al. 2022), Spectroscopy Made Easy (Piskunov & Valenti 2017)
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 1538-3881
- The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
- Ministerio de Educación Cultura y Deporte
- PR2015-00511
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences