The TRAPPIST survey of southern transiting planets. I. Thirty eclipses of the ultra-short period planet WASP-43 b

TL;DR

This study provides extensive observational data and refined parameters for the ultra-short period exoplanet WASP-43 b, including transit, occultation, and radial velocity measurements, revealing details about its physical characteristics and atmospheric properties.

Contribution

The paper presents the most comprehensive dataset for WASP-43 b to date, significantly improving system parameters and providing new insights into its orbital and atmospheric properties.

Findings

Refined stellar density and system parameters.

Detected planetary emission at 2.09 microns with high significance.

Constraints on heat redistribution and atmospheric inversion.

Abstract

We present twenty-three transit light curves and seven occultation light curves for the ultra-short period planet WASP-43 b, in addition to eight new measurements of the radial velocity of the star. Thanks to this extensive data set, we improve significantly the parameters of the system. Notably, the largely improved precision on the stellar density (2.41+-0.08 rho_sun) combined with constraining the age to be younger than a Hubble time allows us to break the degeneracy of the stellar solution mentioned in the discovery paper. The resulting stellar mass and size are 0.717+-0.025 M_sun and 0.667+-0.011 R_sun. Our deduced physical parameters for the planet are 2.034+-0.052 M_jup and 1.036+-0.019 R_jup. Taking into account its level of irradiation, the high density of the planet favors an old age and a massive core. Our deduced orbital eccentricity, 0.0035(-0.0025,+0.0060), is consistent with a fully circularized orbit. We detect the emission of the planet at 2.09 microns at better than 11-sigma, the deduced occultation depth being 1560+-140 ppm. Our detection of the occultation at 1.19 microns is marginal (790+-320 ppm) and more observations are needed to confirm it. We place a 3-sigma upper limit of 850 ppm on the depth of the occultation at ~0.9 microns. Together, these results strongly favor a poor redistribution of the heat to the night-side of the planet, and marginally favor a model with no day-side temperature inversion.