Analyzing Exoplanet Transits Observed with the WFC3/UVIS G280 Grism

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Jupyter notebook demonstrating a comprehensive workflow for reducing and analyzing exoplanet transit data obtained with the WFC3/UVIS G280 grism, facilitating the extraction of transit light curves for planetary studies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed, step-by-step data reduction and analysis pipeline specifically tailored for WFC3/UVIS G280 grism observations, enhancing reproducibility and accessibility.

Findings

Processed light curves ready for spectral analysis

Clear demonstration of cosmic ray correction methods

Workflow facilitates planetary transmission spectrum extraction

Abstract

Here we describe a Jupyter notebook demonstrating methods for the reduction and analysis of exoplanet transit observations taken with the WFC3/UVIS G280 grism. Released on Space Telescope's hst_notebooks GitHub repository, this notebook presents an example workflow for processing time-series observations taken with the G280 grism - from the calibrated flat-fielded spectra to transit light curves ready for fitting. The specific routines presented in the notebook are explained here, and are meant to highlight data reduction steps that users will typically apply to extract transit light curves. The steps include background subtraction, spatial and temporal cosmic ray correction, spectral trace fitting, spectral extraction, and light curve generation. The end products of the routines in the Jupyter notebook are the raw broadband and spectroscopic light curves, which can be ingested into publicly available light curve fitting tools to extract planetary transmission spectra.