Confirmation of water emission in the dayside spectrum of the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-121b

TL;DR

This study confirms water emission in the dayside spectrum of the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-121b using multiple Hubble observations, providing high-precision data that supports a thermal inversion and clarifies previous spectral features.

Contribution

The paper presents four new high-precision secondary eclipse spectra of WASP-121b, improving data quality and confirming water emission and thermal inversion in its atmosphere.

Findings

Water emission band at 1.3-1.6 microns is clearly detected.

A blackbody spectrum is statistically rejected, supporting a thermal inversion.

Previous spectral features attributed to VO are likely artefacts or fluctuations.

Abstract

We present four new secondary eclipse observations for the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-121b acquired using the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3. The eclipse depth is measured to a median precision of 60ppm across 28 spectroscopic channels spanning the 1.12-1.64 micron wavelength range. This is a considerable improvement to the 90ppm precision we achieved previously for a single eclipse observation using the same observing setup. Combining these data with those reported at other wavelengths, a blackbody spectrum for WASP-121b is ruled out at >6-sigma confidence and we confirm the interpretation of previous retrieval analyses that found the data is best explained by a dayside thermal inversion. The updated spectrum clearly resolves the water emission band at 1.3-1.6 micron, with higher signal-to-noise than before. It also fails to reproduce a bump in the spectrum at 1.25 micron derived from the first eclipse observation, which had tentatively been attributed to VO emission. We conclude the latter was either a statistical fluctuation or a systematic artefact specific to the first eclipse dataset.