Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec PRISM

Z Rustamkulov; D K Sing; S Mukherjee; E M May; J Kirk; E Schlawin; M R Line; C Piaulet; A L Carter; N E Batalha; J M Goyal; M López-Morales; J D Lothringer; R J MacDonald; S E Moran; K B Stevenson; H R Wakeford; N Espinoza; J L Bean; N M Batalha; B Benneke; Z K Berta-Thompson; I J M Crossfield; P Gao; L Kreidberg; D K Powell; P E Cubillos; N P Gibson; J Leconte; K Molaverdikhani; N K Nikolov; V Parmentier; P Roy; J Taylor; J D Turner; P J Wheatley; K Aggarwal; E Ahrer; M K Alam; L Alderson; N H Allen; A Banerjee; S Barat; D Barrado; J K Barstow; T J Bell; J Blecic; J Brande; S Casewell; Q Changeat; K L Chubb; N Crouzet; T Daylan; L Decin; J Désert; T Mikal-Evans; A D Feinstein; L Flagg; J J Fortney; J Harrington; K Heng; Y Hong; R Hu; N Iro; T Kataria; E M-R Kempton; J Krick; M Lendl; J Lillo-Box; A Louca; J Lustig-Yaeger; L Mancini; M Mansfield; N J Mayne; Y Miguel; G Morello; K Ohno; E Palle; D J M Petit Dit de la Roche; B V Rackham; M Radica; L Ramos-Rosado; S Redfield; L K Rogers; E L Shkolnik; J Southworth; J Teske; P Tremblin; G S Tucker; O Venot; W C Waalkes; L Welbanks; X Zhang; S Zieba

doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05677-y

Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec PRISM

Nature. 2023 Feb;614(7949):659-663. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05677-y. Epub 2023 Jan 9.

Authors

Z Rustamkulov¹, D K Sing^{2

3}, S Mukherjee⁴, E M May⁵, J Kirk^{6

7}, E Schlawin⁸, M R Line⁹, C Piaulet¹⁰, A L Carter⁴, N E Batalha¹¹, J M Goyal¹², M López-Morales⁶, J D Lothringer¹³, R J MacDonald^{14

15}, S E Moran¹⁶, K B Stevenson⁵, H R Wakeford¹⁷, N Espinoza¹⁸, J L Bean¹⁹, N M Batalha⁴, B Benneke¹⁰, Z K Berta-Thompson²⁰, I J M Crossfield²¹, P Gao²², L Kreidberg²³, D K Powell²⁴, P E Cubillos²⁵, N P Gibson²⁶, J Leconte²⁷, K Molaverdikhani^{28

29}, N K Nikolov¹⁸, V Parmentier^{30

31}, P Roy¹⁰, J Taylor³², J D Turner¹⁵, P J Wheatley^{33

34}, K Aggarwal³⁵, E Ahrer^{33

34}, M K Alam²², L Alderson¹⁷, N H Allen³, A Banerjee³⁶, S Barat³⁷, D Barrado³⁸, J K Barstow³⁶, T J Bell³⁹, J Blecic^{40

41}, J Brande²¹, S Casewell⁴², Q Changeat^{18

43

44}, K L Chubb⁴⁵, N Crouzet⁴⁶, T Daylan⁴⁷, L Decin⁴⁸, J Désert³⁷, T Mikal-Evans²³, A D Feinstein^{19

36}, L Flagg¹⁵, J J Fortney⁴, J Harrington⁴⁹, K Heng²⁸, Y Hong¹⁵, R Hu^{50

51}, N Iro⁵², T Kataria⁵⁰, E M-R Kempton⁵³, J Krick⁵⁴, M Lendl⁵⁵, J Lillo-Box³⁸, A Louca⁴⁶, J Lustig-Yaeger⁵, L Mancini^{23

25

56}, M Mansfield⁸, N J Mayne⁵⁷, Y Miguel^{46

58}, G Morello^{59

60

61}, K Ohno⁴, E Palle⁵⁹, D J M Petit Dit de la Roche⁵⁵, B V Rackham^{62

63}, M Radica¹⁰, L Ramos-Rosado³, S Redfield⁶⁴, L K Rogers⁶⁵, E L Shkolnik⁹, J Southworth⁶⁶, J Teske²², P Tremblin⁶⁷, G S Tucker⁶⁸, O Venot⁶⁹, W C Waalkes⁷⁰, L Welbanks⁹, X Zhang⁷¹, S Zieba^{23

46}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. zafar@jhu.edu.
² Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁴ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
⁵ Johns Hopkins APL, Laurel, MD, USA.
⁶ Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK.
⁸ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
⁹ School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
¹⁰ Institute of Research on Exoplanets, Department of Physics, University of Montreal, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
¹¹ NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
¹² School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), HBNI, Jatani, India.
¹³ Department of Physics, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Astronomy and Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
¹⁶ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
¹⁷ School of Physics, University of Bristol, HH Wills Physics Laboratory, Bristol, UK.
¹⁸ Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
²⁰ Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
²¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.
²² Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC, USA.
²³ Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany.
²⁴ Harvard and Smithsonian, Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA.
²⁵ INAF - Astrophysics Observatory at Turin, Turin, Italy.
²⁶ School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
²⁷ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, CNRS, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac, France.
²⁸ University Observatory Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany.
²⁹ Exzellenzcluster Origins, Garching, Germany.
³⁰ Université Côte d'Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, Nice, France.
³¹ Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³² Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³³ Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
³⁴ Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
³⁵ Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, Indore, India.
³⁶ School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
³⁷ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
³⁸ Centre for Astrobiology (CSIC-INTA), European Space Astronomy Centre Campus, University of Maria de Maeztu, Madrid, Spain.
³⁹ BAER Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, Mountain View, CA, USA.
⁴⁰ New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
⁴¹ Center for Astro, Particle and Planetary Physics (CAP3), New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
⁴² School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
⁴³ European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Baltimore Office, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁴⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London, UK.
⁴⁵ Centre for Exoplanet Science, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
⁴⁶ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
⁴⁷ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
⁴⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁴⁹ Planetary Science Group, Department of Physics and Florida Space Institute, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA.
⁵⁰ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁵¹ Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁵² Institute for Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁵³ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁵⁴ California Institute of Technology, IPAC, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁵⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
⁵⁶ Department of Physics, University of Rome 'Tor Vergata', Rome, Italy.
⁵⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
⁵⁸ SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, the Netherlands.
⁵⁹ Institute for Astrophysics of Canarias (IAC), La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
⁶⁰ Department of Astrophysics, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
⁶¹ INAF Äì Palermo Astronomical Observatory, Palermo, Italy.
⁶² Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶³ Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶⁴ Astronomy Department and Van Vleck Observatory, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA.
⁶⁵ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.
⁶⁶ Astrophysics Group, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK.
⁶⁷ UVSQ, CNRS, CEA, Maison de la Simulation, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
⁶⁸ Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
⁶⁹ Université de Paris Cité and Univ Paris Est Creteil, CNRS, LISA, Paris, France.
⁷⁰ Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁷¹ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.

Abstract

Transmission spectroscopy^1-3 of exoplanets has revealed signatures of water vapour, aerosols and alkali metals in a few dozen exoplanet atmospheres^4,5. However, these previous inferences with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes were hindered by the observations' relatively narrow wavelength range and spectral resolving power, which precluded the unambiguous identification of other chemical species-in particular the primary carbon-bearing molecules^6,7. Here we report a broad-wavelength 0.5-5.5 µm atmospheric transmission spectrum of WASP-39b⁸, a 1,200 K, roughly Saturn-mass, Jupiter-radius exoplanet, measured with the JWST NIRSpec's PRISM mode⁹ as part of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team Program^10-12. We robustly detect several chemical species at high significance, including Na (19σ), H₂O (33σ), CO₂ (28σ) and CO (7σ). The non-detection of CH₄, combined with a strong CO₂ feature, favours atmospheric models with a super-solar atmospheric metallicity. An unanticipated absorption feature at 4 µm is best explained by SO₂ (2.7σ), which could be a tracer of atmospheric photochemistry. These observations demonstrate JWST's sensitivity to a rich diversity of exoplanet compositions and chemical processes.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding