Jupiter's transmission spectrum

González-Merino, B.; Montañes-Rodríguez, P.; Palle, E.
Referencia bibliográfica

Search for Life Beyond the Solar System. Exoplanets, Biosignatures & Instruments. Online at http://www.ebi2014.org, id.3.2

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3
2014
Número de autores
3
Número de autores del IAC
3
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
In relation to the gas giants that have been observed, Jupiter is located relatively far from its star. Observing Jupiter as an exoplanet can provide information about what to expect when getting data from similar gas giants around other stars. Even though Jupiter's transmission spectrum can be difficult to observe when looking from the Earth, it is possible to do it by using one of the Moons orbiting the planet as a mirror while in Jupiter's shadow. For example, Formisano et al. (2003) reported the detection of Jupiter's methane absorption bands when the Cassini VIMS experiment observed the occultation of the moon Io during its flyby in December 2000. Here, we present the first detection of Jupiter's transmission spectrum from ground-based observations. The first set of observations were taken from La Palma, Spain on the night of the 6th of October 2012, with the William Herchel Telescope (WHT) using the Long-slit Intermediate Resolution Infrared Spectrograph (LIRIS) instrument, which covers the spectral range of 900- 2400 nm with a spectral resolution, R, around 2000: we used Ganymede as a mirror that night. The second set of observations were taken during the nights of the 10th and 17th of November, 2012 from Cerro Paranal using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Xshooter, a multiwavelength spectrograph with three different arms: UVB, with the wavelength range of 300- 559.5 nm and R=9900, VIS for 559.5-1024 nm and R=18200 and NIR, for 1024-2480 nm and R=10500. During the first night, Europa was used as a mirror, while during the second one it was Ganymede again.