Related papers: More Evidence for Variable Helium Absorption from …
We present Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared transit photometry of the nearby hot-Jupiter HD189733b. The observations were taken with the NICMOS instrument during five transits, with three transits executed with a narrowband filter at…
Changes in levels of stellar activity can mimic absorption signatures in transmission spectra from circumplanetary material. The frequency and magnitude of these changes is thus important to understand in order to attribute any particular…
Bow shocks are ubiquitous astrophysical phenomena resulting from the supersonic passage of an object through a gas. Recently, pre-transit absorption in UV metal transitions of the hot Jupiter exoplanets HD 189733b and WASP12-b have been…
When transiting their host stars, hot Jupiters absorb about 10% of the light in the wings of the stellar Lyman-alpha emission line. The absorption occurs at wavelengths Doppler-shifted from line center by +/- 100 km/s - larger than the…
Large-scale exoplanet search surveys have shown evidence that atmospheric escape is a ubiquitous process that shapes the evolution and demographics of planets. However, we lack a detailed understanding of this process because very few…
We report on a search for H-alpha absorption in four exoplanets. Strong features at H-alpha are observed in the transmission spectra of both HD 189733b and HD 209458b. We attempt to characterize and remove the effects of stellar variability…
The discovery of OI atoms and CII ions in the upper atmosphere of HD 209458b, made with the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) using the G140L grating, showed that these heavy species fill an area comparable to the planet's…
The hot Jupiter HD 209458b was observed during primary transit at 3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8.0 microns using the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We detail here the procedures we adopted to correct for the systematic…
We use Keck/NIRSPEC to survey a sample of of young ($<$1 Gyr), short period mini Neptunes orbiting nearby K dwargs to measure their mass loss via the metastable helium line. We detect helium absorption from all four of the targets in our…
Violent variation of transit depths and an ingress-egress asymmetry of the transit light curve discovered in KIC 12557548 have been interpreted as evidences of a catastrophic evaporation of atmosphere with dust (M_p gtrsim 1 M_oplus/Gyr)…
Context: Recently, the He I triplet at 10830 \r{A} has been rediscovered as an excellent probe of the extended and possibly evaporating atmospheres of close-in transiting planets. This has already resulted in detections of this triplet in…
The transiting exoplanet HD 149026b is an important case for theories of planet formation and planetary structure, because the planet's relatively small size has been interpreted as evidence for a highly metal-enriched composition. We…
We have detected excess absorption in the emission cores of Ca II H & K during transits of HD 189733b for the first time. Using observations of three transits we investigate the origin of the absorption, which is also seen in H{\alpha} and…
As the closest transiting hot Jupiter to Earth, HD 189733b has been the benchmark planet for atmospheric characterization. It has also been the anchor point for much of our theoretical understanding of exoplanet atmospheres from…
We used WIRCam on CFHT to observe four transits of the super-Earth GJ 1214b in the near-infrared. For each transit we observed in two bands nearly-simultaneously by rapidly switching the WIRCam filter wheel back and forth for the duration…
Here we present the analysis of multi-epoch secondary eclipse observations of HD 189733b and HD 209458b as a probe of temporal variability in the planetary climate using both Spitzer channels 1 and 2 (3.6 and 4.5 um). Constraining temporal…
Observational evidence for escaping exoplanet atmospheres has been obtained for a few exoplanets to date. It comes from strong transit signals detected in the ultraviolet, most notably in the wings of the hydrogen Lyman-$\alpha$…
During primary transits, the spectral signatures of an exoplanet atmosphere can be measured using transmission spectroscopy. The goal of this work is to accurately measure the atomspheric sodium absorption light curve in HD189733b,…
We present transmission spectra of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard HST. The spectra cover the wavelength range 5808-6380 Ang with a resolving power of R=5000. We detect absorption from…
Transmission spectroscopy at UV wavelengths is a rich and largely unexplored source of information about the upper atmospheres of extrasolar planets. So far, UV transit observations have led to the detection of atomic hydrogen, oxygen and…