HAT-P-26b: A Neptune-mass exoplanet with a well-constrained heavy element abundance

Hannah R. Wakeford; David K. Sing; Tiffany Kataria; Drake Deming; Nikolay Nikolov; Eric D. Lopez; Pascal Tremblin; David S. Amundsen; Nikole K. Lewis; Avi M. Mandell; Jonathan J. Fortney; Heather Knutson; Björn Benneke; Thomas M. Evans

doi:10.1126/science.aah4668

Report

HAT-P-26b: A Neptune-mass exoplanet with a well-constrained heavy element abundance

Hannah R. Wakeford¹,*,†,
David K. Sing²,†,
Tiffany Kataria³,
Drake Deming⁴,
Nikolay Nikolov²,
Eric D. Lopez¹,⁵,
Pascal Tremblin⁶,
David S. Amundsen⁷,⁸,
Nikole K. Lewis⁹,
Avi M. Mandell¹,
Jonathan J. Fortney¹⁰,
Heather Knutson¹¹,
Björn Benneke¹¹,
Thomas M. Evans²

¹NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
²Astrophysics Group, University of Exeter, Physics Building, Stocker Road, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QL UK.
³NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
⁴Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
⁵Institute for Astronomy, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, UK.
⁶Maison de la Simulation, Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), Université Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
⁷Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10025, USA.
⁸NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA.
⁹Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
¹⁰Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
¹¹Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

↵*Corresponding author. Email: hannah.wakeford{at}nasa.gov

↵† These authors contributed equally to this work.

See allHide authors and affiliations

Science 12 May 2017:
Vol. 356, Issue 6338, pp. 628-631
DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4668

Hannah R. Wakeford

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for Hannah R. Wakeford
For correspondence: hannah.wakeford@nasa.gov

David K. Sing

Astrophysics Group, University of Exeter, Physics Building, Stocker Road, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QL UK.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for David K. Sing

Tiffany Kataria

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for Tiffany Kataria

Drake Deming

Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site

Nikolay Nikolov

Astrophysics Group, University of Exeter, Physics Building, Stocker Road, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QL UK.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for Nikolay Nikolov

Eric D. Lopez

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.Institute for Astronomy, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, UK.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site

Pascal Tremblin

Maison de la Simulation, Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), Université Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for Pascal Tremblin

David S. Amundsen

Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10025, USA.NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for David S. Amundsen

Nikole K. Lewis

Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for Nikole K. Lewis

Avi M. Mandell

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site

Jonathan J. Fortney

Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site
ORCID record for Jonathan J. Fortney

Heather Knutson

Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site

Björn Benneke

Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site

Thomas M. Evans

Astrophysics Group, University of Exeter, Physics Building, Stocker Road, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QL UK.

Find this author on Google Scholar
Find this author on PubMed
Search for this author on this site

Article
Figures & Data
Info & Metrics
eLetters
PDF

You are currently viewing the editor's summary.

View Full Text

Log in to view the full text

via AAAS login

AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.

Become a AAAS member
Activate account
Add journals
Account help

As a service to the community, this article is available for free. Existing users log in.

Become a AAAS member
Account help

Log in through your institution

More options

Purchase digital access to this article

Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.

Purchase this issue in print

Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.

How much water is in that exoplanet?

Thousands of exoplanets have been identified, but little is known about their atmospheres, especially for bodies smaller than Jupiter. The extent and composition of an atmosphere can provide evidence for how an exoplanet formed. Wakeford et al. used the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to measure the spectrum of the atmosphere around HAT-P-26b, a Neptune-sized exoplanet discovered in 2011. They detected signatures of water and clouds; this allowed them to constrain the atmospheric composition, which appears not to have been altered substantially since it formed.

Science, this issue p. 628

HAT-P-26b: A Neptune-mass exoplanet with a well-constrained heavy element abundance

How much water is in that exoplanet?

Science

Article Tools