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3 May 2018
Artist’s impression of WASP-107b
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected helium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b. This is the first time this element has been detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar System. The discovery demonstrates the ability to use infrared spectra to study exoplanet extended atmospheres.
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
The international team of astronomers, led by Jessica Spake, a PhD student at the University of Exeter in the UK, used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to discover helium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b This is the first detection of its kind.
Spake explains the importance of the discovery: “Helium is the second-most common element in the Universe after hydrogen. It is also one of the main constituents of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. However, up until now helium had not been detected on exoplanets - despite searches for it.”
Artist’s impression of WASP-107b
The team made the detection by analysing the infrared spectrum of the atmosphere of WASP-107b [1]. Previous detections of extended exoplanet atmospheres have been made by studying the spectrum at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths; this detection therefore demonstrates that exoplanet atmospheres can also be studied at longer wavelengths.
“The strong signal from helium we measured demonstrates a new technique to study upper layers of exoplanet atmospheres in a wider range of planets,” says Spake “Current methods, which use ultraviolet light, are limited to the closest exoplanets. We know there is helium in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and this new technique may help us to detect atmospheres around Earth-sized exoplanets – which is very difficult with current technology.”
Creation of absorption lines
WASP-107b is one of the lowest density planets known: While the planet is about the same size as Jupiter, it has only 12% of Jupiter’s mass. The exoplanet is about 200 light-years from Earth and takes less than six days to orbit its host star.
The amount of helium detected in the atmosphere of WASP-107b is so large that its upper atmosphere must extend tens of thousands of kilometres out into space. This also makes it the first time that an extended atmosphere has been discovered at infrared wavelengths.
Since its atmosphere is so extended, the planet is losing a significant amount of its atmospheric gases into space — between ~0.1-4% of its atmosphere’s total mass every billion years [2].
Light interacting with atmosphere
As far back as the year 2000, it was predicted that helium would be one of the most readily-detectable gases on giant exoplanets, but until now, searches were unsuccessful.
David Sing, co-author of the study also from the University of Exeter, concludes: “Our new method, along with future telescopes such as the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, will allow us to analyse atmospheres of exoplanets in far greater detail than ever before.”
Notes:
[1] The measurement of an exoplanet’s atmosphere is performed when the planet passes in front of its host star. A tiny portion of the star’s light passes through the exoplanet’s atmosphere, leaving detectable fingerprints in the spectrum of the star. The larger the amount of an element present in the atmosphere, the easier the detection becomes.
[2] Stellar radiation has a significant effect on the rate at which a planet’s atmosphere escapes. The star WASP-107 is highly active, supporting the atmospheric loss. As the atmosphere absorbs radiation it heats up, so the gas rapidly expands and escapes more quickly into space.
More information:
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
The study was published in the paper “Helium in the eroding atmosphere of an exoplanet”, published in Nature.
The international team of astronomers in this study consists of J. J. Spake (University of Exeter, UK), D. K. Sing (University of Exeter, UK; Johns Hopkins University, USA), T. M. Evans (University of Exeter, UK), A. Oklopčić (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA), V. Bourrier (Observatoire de l’Université de Genève, Switzerland), L. Kreidberg (Harvard Society of Fellows, USA; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA), B. V. Rackham (University of Arizona, USA), J. Irwin (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA), D. Ehrenreich (Observatoire de l’Université de Genève, Switzerland), A. Wyttenbach (Observatoire de l’Université de Genève, Switzerland), H. R. Wakeford (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA), Y. Zhou (University of Arizona, USA), K. L. Chubb (University College London, UK), N. Nikolov (University of Exeter, UK), J. Goyal (University of Exeter, UK), G. W. Henry (Tennessee State University, USA), M. H. Williamson (Tennessee State University, USA), S. Blumenthal (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA), D. Anderson (Keele University, UK), C. Hellier (Keele University, UK), D. Charbonneau (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA), S. Udry (Observatoire de l’Université de Genève, Switzerland), and N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge, UK)
Links:
Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/
Science paper: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1809/heic1809a.pdf
Hubblecast 102: Taking the fingerprint of exoplanet atmospheres: http://spacetelescope.org/videos/hubblecast102a/
Related links:
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3: https://www.spacetelescope.org/about/general/instruments/wfc3/
NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): http://sci.esa.int/jwst/
Image, Animation, Videos, Text, Credits: NASA, ESA/Mathias Jäger/University of Exeter/David Sing/Jessica Spake/Hubble/M. Kornmesser.
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