Bibcode
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
Advertised on:
3
2014
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.