Secondary eclipses of two brown dwarfs in the K2 fields: detection by multiple dataset merging

TL;DR

This study detects secondary eclipses of two brown dwarfs in K2 data by merging multiple datasets and modeling their light curves, providing insights into their thermal emission and albedo properties.

Contribution

It introduces a method of combining various data sources and full time series modeling to detect brown dwarf eclipses in K2 fields, confirming orbital parameters and analyzing their reflective properties.

Findings

Detected secondary eclipses consistent with radial velocity data

HSHJ 430b shows high thermal emission in Kepler band

CWW 89Ab suggests a high albedo of ~0.6

Abstract

By using various data sources for the stellar fluxes in overlapping campaign fields and employing full time series modeling, we report the detection of the secondary eclipses of two brown dwarfs (CWW 89Ab = EPIC 219388192b and HSHJ 430b = EPIC 211946007b). The detections yielded timings in agreement with the orbital elements derived from the earlier radial velocity measurements and eclipse depths of 70+/-12 ppm (CWW 89Ab) and 852+/-123 ppm (HSHJ 430b). While the high depth in the Kepler waveband for HSHJ 430b is in agreement with the assumption that the emitted flux comes mostly from the internal heat source and the absorbed stellar irradiation, the case of CWW 89Ab suggests very high albedo, because of the lack of sufficient thermal radiation in the Kepler waveband. Assuming completely reflective dayside hemisphere, without circulation, the maximum value of the eclipse depth due to the reflection of the stellar light is 56 ppm. By making the extreme assumption that the true eclipse depth is 3 sigma less than the observed depth, the minimum geometric albedo becomes ~0.6.