Feinstein, A. D., Radica, M., Welbanks, L., Murray, C. A., Ohno, K., Coulombe, L. P., et al. (2023). Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRISS. Nature, Early Access.
Abstract: The Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b has been the subject of extensive efforts to determine its atmospheric properties using transmission spectroscopy(1-4). However, these efforts have been hampered by modelling degeneracies between composition and cloud properties that are caused by limited data quality(5-9). Here we present the transmission spectrum of WASP-39b obtained using the Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy (SOSS) mode of the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument on the JWST. This spectrum spans 0.6-2.8 mu m in wavelength and shows several water-absorption bands, the potassium resonance doublet and signatures of clouds. The precision and broad wavelength coverage of NIRISS/SOSS allows us to break model degeneracies between cloud properties and the atmospheric composition of WASP-39b, favouring a heavy-element enhancement ('metallicity') of about 10-30 times the solar value, a sub-solar carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio and a solar-to-super-solar potassium-to-oxygen (K/O) ratio. The observations are also best explained by wavelength-dependent, non-grey clouds with inhomogeneous coverageof the planet's terminator.
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Sbordone, L., Hansen, C. J., Monaco, L., Cristallo, S., Bonifacio, P., Caffau, E., et al. (2020). A wide angle view of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy II. A CEMP-r/s star in the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Astron. Astrophys., 641, 9 pp.
Abstract: We report on the discovery and chemical abundance analysis of the first CEMP-r/s star detected in the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Sgr dSph) by means of UVES high-resolution spectra. The star, found in the outskirts of Sgr dSph, along the major axis of the main body, is a moderately metal-poor giant (T-eff=4753 K, log g=1.75, [Fe/H] = -1.55) with [C/Fe] = 1.13, placing it in the so-called “high-carbon band”, and strong s-process and r-process enrichment ([Ba/Fe] = 1.4, [Eu/Fe] = 1.01). Abundances of 29 elements from C to Dy were obtained. The chemical pattern appears to be best fitted by a scenario where an r-process pollution event pre-enriched the material out of which the star was born as secondary in a binary system whose primary evolved through the AGB phase, providing C- and s-process enrichment.
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