NUV radii of the extrasolar planet HD 209458b

TL;DR

This study used HST/ACS to perform NUV transmission spectroscopy of exoplanet HD 209458b, providing a radius measurement consistent with previous visible-light data despite systematic challenges.

Contribution

First NUV transmission spectrum of HD 209458b obtained with HST/ACS, demonstrating the potential and challenges of NUV atmospheric characterization.

Findings

NUV radius of HD 209458b is 1.4 Rjup ± 0.08

NUV radius measurement aligns with visible-light data

Systematic effects limit high-precision NUV radius extraction

Abstract

Extrasolar planetary transits are powerful tools to probe their atmosphere and to extract key physical properties of planets, like their mean densities, chemical compositions, or atmospheric structures. Every 3.5 days, the transits of the gaseous planet orbiting HD209458 offer the opportunity to investigate the spectral features of its atmosphere. We present here NUV transmission spectroscopy of the transiting extrasolar planet HD209458b using HST/ACS. We show the data analysis of the seven HST orbits which were used to observe two transits of HD209458b. Due to various remaining systematics, the radius of the planet in the NUV could not be extracted with a high precison. However, we derived a radius of Rp=1.4Rjup+/-0.08 between 2800 and 3100 AA which is consistent with previous measurements in the visible.