The signal from a transiting planet can be diluted by astrophysical contamination. In the case of circumstellar debris disks, this contamination could start in the mid-infrared and vary as a function of wavelength, which would then change the observed transmission spectrum for any planet in the system. The MIRI/Low Resolution Spectrometer WASP-39b transmission spectrum shows an unexplained dip starting at ∼10 μm that could be caused by astrophysical contamination. The spectral energy distribution displays excess flux at similar levels to that which are needed to create the dip in the transmission spectrum. In this Letter, we show that this dip is consistent with the presence of a bright circumstellar debris disk, at a distance of >2 au. We discuss how a circumstellar debris disk like that could affect the atmosphere of WASP-39b. We also show that even faint debris disks can be a source of contamination in MIRI exoplanet spectra.
Debris Disks Can Contaminate Mid-infrared Exoplanet Spectra: Evidence for a Circumstellar Debris Disk around Exoplanet Host WASP-39
- Creators
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Flagg, Laura
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Weinberger, Alycia J.
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Bell, Taylor J.
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Welbanks, Luis
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Morello, Giuseppe
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Powell, Diana
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Bean, Jacob L.
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Blecic, Jasmina
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Crouzet, Nicolas
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Gao, Peter
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Inglis, Julie
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Kirk, James
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López-Morales, Mercedes
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Molaverdikhani, Karan
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Nikolov, Nikolay
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Oza, Apurva V.
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Rackham, Benjamin V.
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Redfield, Seth
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Tsai, Shang-Min
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Jayawardhana, Ray
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Kreidberg, Laura
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Nixon, Matthew C.
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Stevenson, Kevin B.
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Turner, Jake D.
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2024. 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 would like to thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. T.J.B. acknowledges funding support from the NASA Next Generation Space Telescope Flight Investigations program (now JWST) through WBS 411672.07.05.05.03.02.
These observations are associated with program JWST-ERS-01366. Support for program JWST-ERS-01366 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Data Availability
The JWST data presented in this Letter were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The specific observations analyzed can be accessed via doi:10.17909/wm2n-0j50.
Software References
SpectRes (Carnall 2017), NumPy (Oliphant 2006; Van Der Walt et al. 2011), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), astropy (Collaboration et al. 2013), synphot (STScI Development Team 2018).
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 2041-8213
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NAS 5-03127
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- WBS 411672.07.05.05.03.02
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- JWST-ERS-01366