We analyse the transmission and emission spectra of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-76b, observed with the G141 grism of the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). We reduce and fit the raw data for each observation using the open-source software Iraclis before performing a fully Bayesian retrieval using the publicly available analysis suite TauRex 3. Previous studies of the WFC3 transmission spectra of WASP-76 b found hints of titanium oxide (TiO) and vanadium oxide (VO) or non-grey clouds. Accounting for a fainter stellar companion to WASP-76, we reanalyse this data and show that removing the effects of this background star changes the slope of the spectrum, resulting in these visible absorbers no longer being detected, eliminating the need for a non-grey cloud model to adequately fit the data but maintaining the strong water feature previously seen. However, our analysis of the emission spectrum suggests the presence of TiO and an atmospheric thermal inversion, along with a significant amount of water. Given the brightness of the host star and the size of the atmospheric features, WASP-76 b is an excellent target for further characterisation with HST, or with future facilities, to better understand the nature of its atmosphere, to confirm the presence of TiO and to search for other optical absorbers.
@article{arxiv.2005.02374,
title = {ARES I: WASP-76 b, A Tale of Two HST Spectra},
author = {Billy Edwards and Quentin Changeat and Robin Baeyens and Angelos Tsiaras and Ahmed Al-Refaie and Jake Taylor and Kai Hou Yip and Michelle Fabienne Bieger and Doriann Blain and Amelie Gressier and Gloria Guilluy and Adam Yassin Jaziri and Flavien Kiefer and Darius Modirrousta-Galian and Mario Morvan and Lorenzo V. Mugnai and William Pluriel and Mathilde Poveda and Nour Skaf and Niall Whiteford and Sam Wright and Tiziano Zingales and Benjamin Charnay and Pierre Drossart and Jeremy Leconte and Olivia Venot and Ingo Waldmann and Jean-Philippe Beaulieu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.02374},
year = {2020}
}