Overcast mornings and clear evenings in hot Jupiter exoplanet atmospheres

TL;DR

This study uses JWST spectra to analyze aerosol distribution differences between morning and evening limbs of hot Jupiters, revealing inhomogeneous aerosols that affect atmospheric characterization and proposing a new metric for limb spectral features.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical evidence of limb asymmetry in hot Jupiter atmospheres and introduces the Limb Spectroscopy Metric (LSM) for predicting spectral feature sizes.

Findings

Heterogeneous aerosols are common among hot Jupiters.

Limb asymmetry can mimic high-metallicity atmospheres in spectra.

The 'asymmetry horizon' marks the transition to inhomogeneous aerosol coverage.

Abstract

Aerosols is an old topic in the young field of exoplanet atmospheres. Understanding what they are, how they form, and where they go has long provided a fertile playground for theorists. For observers, however, aerosols have been a multi-decade migraine, as their chronic presence hides atmospheric features. For hot Jupiters, the large day-night temperature contrast drives inhomogeneous thermal structures and aerosol distribution, leading to different limb properties probed by transit spectra. We present JWST NIRISS/SOSS spectra of morning and evening limbs for nine gas giants with equilibrium temperatures of ~800-1700 K. By measuring feature size of the 1.4 $\mu$m water band for both limbs, we found three planets (WASP-39 b, WASP-94 Ab, and WASP-17 b) show prominent ($>$5$\sigma$) limb-limb atmospheric opacity difference with muted morning and clear evening limbs. The heavily muted water features on morning limbs indicate high-altitude (0.1 to 0.01 mbar) aerosols. To simultaneously have clear evening limbs requires processes with timescales ($\sim$day) comparable to advection to remove these lofted grains, and we found that both downwelling flow and dayside cloud evaporation could be plausible mechanisms. We hypothesize an empirical boundary--termed the "asymmetry horizon"--in temperature-gravity space that marks the transition where inhomogeneous aerosol coverage begins to emerge. Heterogeneous aerosol coverage is common among hot Jupiters. If unrecognized, limb averaging suppresses spectral features, mimicking high-mean-molecular-weight atmospheres, inflating inferred metallicity by up to 2 dex, and underestimating limb temperatures by as much as half. Finally, we introduce the Limb Spectroscopy Metric (LSM) to predict limb spectral feature size based on planet parameters.