Spectrally resolved detection of sodium in the atmosphere of HD189733b with the HARPS spectrograph

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution transit spectroscopy with HARPS to detect and characterize sodium in the atmosphere of exoplanet HD189733b, revealing temperature structure and wind dynamics in its upper atmosphere.

Contribution

First high-resolution detection and spectral resolution of sodium in HD189733b's atmosphere, providing detailed temperature and wind measurements.

Findings

Detected sodium absorption at 10-sigma significance

Measured atmospheric temperatures of 2600 K and 3270 K at different altitudes

Observed a blueshift indicating atmospheric winds of 8 km/s

Abstract

Atmospheric properties of exoplanets can be constrained with transit spectroscopy. The signature of atomic sodium NaI, known to be present above the clouds, is a powerful probe of the upper atmosphere, where it can be best detected and characterized at high spectral resolution. Our goal is to obtain a high-resolution transit spectrum of HD189733b in the region around the resonance doublet of NaI at 589 nm, to characterize the absorption signature previously detected from space at low resolution. We analyze archival transit data of HD189733b obtained with the HARPS spectrograph. We retrieve the transit spectrum and light curve of the planet, implementing corrections for telluric contamination and planetary orbital motion. We spectrally resolve the NaI D doublet and measure line contrasts of $0.64\pm0.07\%$ (D2) and $0.40\pm0.07\%$ (D1) and FWHMs of $0.52\pm0.08~\AA$. This corresponds to a detection at the 10-$\sigma$ level of excess of absorption of $0.32\pm0.03\%$ in a passband of $2\times0.75\ \AA$ centered on each line. We derive temperatures of $2\,600\pm600$ K and $3270\pm330$ K at altitudes of $9\,800\pm2\,800$ km and $12\,700\pm2\,600$ km in the NaI D1 and D2 line cores, respectively. We measure a temperature gradient of $\sim0.2$ K km$^{-1}$ from comparison with theoretical models. We also detect a blueshift of $0.16\pm0.04\ \AA$ (4 $\sigma$) in the line positions. This blueshift may be due to winds blowing at $8\pm2$ km s$^{-1}$ in the upper layers of the atmosphere. We demonstrate the relevance of studying exoplanet atmospheres with high-resolution spectrographs mounted on 4-meter-class telescopes. Our results pave the way towards in-depth characterization of physical conditions in the atmospheres of many exoplanetary systems with future spectrographs such as ESPRESSO on the VLT or HiReS and METIS on the E-ELT.