A map of the large day–night temperature gradient of a super-Earth exoplanet
| Autor: | Vlada Stamenkovic, Emeline Bolmont, Nikole K. Lewis, Kevin Heng, Stephen R. Kane, Björn Benneke, Julien de Wit, Nikku Madhusudhan, Jessica Krick, Didier Queloz, Tiffany Kataria, Michaël Gillon, Brice-Olivier Demory, Renyu Hu |
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| Přispěvatelé: | Demory, Brice-Oliver [0000-0002-9355-5165], Nikku, Madhusudhan [0000-0002-4869-000X], Queloz, Didier [0000-0002-3012-0316], Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
Brightness
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences 530 Physics FOS: Physical sciences 01 natural sciences Atmosphere Planet 0103 physical sciences Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 010303 astronomy & astrophysics Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Physics Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) Multidisciplinary Super-Earth 520 Astronomy Astronomy Exoplanet Tidal locking Temperature gradient Brightness temperature astro-ph.EP Physics::Space Physics Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics |
| Zdroj: | Nature. 532 |
| ISSN: | 0028-0836 |
| Popis: | Over the past decade, observations of giant exoplanets (Jupiter-size) have provided key insights into their atmospheres, but the properties of lower-mass exoplanets (sub-Neptune) remain largely unconstrained because of the challenges of observing small planets. Numerous efforts to observe the spectra of super-Earths (exoplanets with masses of one to ten times that of Earth) have so far revealed only featureless spectra. Here we report a longitudinal thermal brightness map of the nearby transiting super-Earth 55 Cancri e revealing highly asymmetric dayside thermal emission and a strong day-night temperature contrast. Dedicated space-based monitoring of the planet in the infrared revealed a modulation of the thermal flux as 55 Cancri e revolves around its star in a tidally locked configuration. These observations reveal a hot spot that is located 41 +- 12 degrees east of the substellar point (the point at which incident light from the star is perpendicular to the surface of the planet). From the orbital phase curve, we also constrain the nightside brightness temperature of the planet to 1380 +- 400 kelvin and the temperature of the warmest hemisphere (centred on the hot spot) to be about 1300 kelvin hotter (2700 +- 270 kelvin) at a wavelength of 4.5 microns, which indicates inefficient heat redistribution from the dayside to the nightside. Our observations are consistent with either an optically thick atmosphere with heat recirculation confined to the planetary dayside, or a planet devoid of atmosphere with low-viscosity magma flows at the surface. Comment: Published in Nature on 14 April 2016. Preprint version includes 32 pages, 11 figures and 2 tables |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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