Constraints on the Atmospheric Circulation and Variability of the Eccentric Hot Jupiter XO-3b

Abstract

We report secondary eclipse photometry of the hot Jupiter XO-3b in the 4.5~$\mu$m band taken with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We measure individual eclipse depths and center of eclipse times for a total of twelve secondary eclipses. We fit these data simultaneously with two transits observed in the same band in order to obtain a global best-fit secondary eclipse depth of $0.1580\pm 0.0036\%$ and a center of eclipse phase of $0.67004\pm 0.00013$. We assess the relative magnitude of variations in the dayside brightness of the planet by measuring the size of the residuals during ingress and egress from fitting the combined eclipse light curve with a uniform disk model and place an upper limit of 0.05$\%$. The new secondary eclipse observations extend the total baseline from one and a half years to nearly three years, allowing us to place an upper limit on the periastron precession rate of $2.9\times 10^{-3}$ degrees/day the tightest constraint to date on the periastron precession rate of a hot Jupiter. We use the new transit observations to calculate improved estimates for the system properties, including an updated orbital ephemeris. We also use the large number of secondary eclipses to obtain the most stringent limits to date on the orbit-to-orbit variability of an eccentric hot Jupiter and demonstrate the consistency of multiple-epoch Spitzer observations.

arXiv comment14 pages, 11 figures, published by ApJ

References in corpus (44)

• The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) for the Spitzer Space Telescope
• Analytic Lightcurves for Planetary Transit Searches
• Achieving better than 1 minute accuracy in the Heliocentric and Barycentric Julian Dates
• Detection of Thermal Emission from an Extrasolar Planet
• Atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters: Coupled radiative-dynamical general circulation model simulations of HD 189733b and HD 209458b
• Infrared radiation from an extrasolar planet
• The 3.6-8.0 Micron Broadband Emission Spectrum of HD 209458b: Evidence for an Atmospheric Temperature Inversion
• 3D mixing in hot Jupiter atmospheres. I. application to the day/night cold trap in HD 209458b
• Friends of Hot Jupiters I: A Radial Velocity Search for Massive, Long-Period Companions to Close-In Gas Giant Planets
• The climate of HD 189733b from fourteen transits and eclipses measured by Spitzer
• 3.6 and 4.5 Micron Phase Curves and Evidence for Non-Equilibrium Chemistry in the Atmosphere of Extrasolar Planet HD 189733b
• Improved spectroscopic parameters for transiting planet hosts
• Parameter Estimation from Time-Series Data with Correlated Errors: A Wavelet-Based Method and its Application to Transit Light Curves
• The Transit Light Curve Project. IX. Evidence for a Smaller Radius of the Exoplanet XO-3b
• The Broadband Infrared Emission Spectrum of the Exoplanet HD 189733b
• Inference of Inhomogeneous Clouds in an Exoplanet Atmosphere
• A Correlation Between Stellar Activity and Hot Jupiter Emission Spectra
• Stellar Limb-Darkening Coefficients for CoRot and Kepler
• A Plateau in the Planet Population Below Twice the Size of Earth
• Misaligned spin-orbit in the XO-3 planetary system?
• Atmospheric Heat Redistribution on Hot Jupiters
• Orbital Phase Variations of the Eccentric Giant Planet HAT-P-2b
• A Two-Dimensional Infrared Map of the Extrasolar Planet HD 189733b
• XO-3b: A Massive Planet in an Eccentric Orbit Transiting an F5V Star
• Atmospheric Circulation of Eccentric Hot Neptune GJ436b
• Pseudo 2D chemical model of hot Jupiter atmospheres: application to HD 209458b and HD 189733b
• Improved parameters for the transiting hot Jupiters WASP-4b and WASP-5b
• Towards consistent mapping of distant worlds: secondary-eclipse scanning of the exoplanet HD189733b
• A Model for Thermal Phase Variations of Circular and Eccentric Exoplanets
• On the Spin-Orbit Misalignment of the XO-3 Exoplanetary System
• Resolving the Surfaces of Extrasolar Planets With Secondary Eclipse Light Curves
• Three-dimensional atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters on highly eccentric orbits
• A Search for a Sub-Earth Sized Companion to GJ 436 and a Novel Method to Calibrate Warm Spitzer IRAC Observations
• Observability of the General Relativistic Precession of Periastra in Exoplanets
• Hydrodynamic Simulations of Unevenly Irradiated Jovian Planets
• Refined stellar, orbital and planetary parameters of the eccentric HAT-P-2 planetary system
• Hot Jupiter Variability in Eclipse Depth
• Stellar Photometry and Astrometry with Discrete Point Spread Functions
• Warm Spitzer Photometry of Three Hot Jupiters: HAT-P-3b, HAT-P-4b and HAT-P-12b
• Thermal Emission and Tidal Heating of the Heavy and Eccentric Planet XO-3b
• Chemical Timescales in the Atmospheres of Highly Eccentric Exoplanets
• Warm Spitzer and Palomar Near-IR Secondary Eclipse Photometry of Two Hot Jupiters: WASP-48b and HAT-P-23b
• A Dynamical Method for Measuring Masses of Stars with Transiting Planets
• Further Observations of the Tilted Planet XO-3: A New Determination of Spin-Orbit Misalignment, and Limits on Differential Rotation

Cited by in corpus (29)

• Observing transiting planets with JWST -- Prime targets and their synthetic spectral observations
• Characterizing Transiting Planet Atmospheres through 2025
• Balancing the Energy Budget of Short-Period Giant Planets: Evidence for Reflective Clouds and Optical Absorbers
• 3.6 and 4.5 $\mu$m $Spitzer$ Phase Curves of the Highly-Irradiated Hot Jupiters WASP-19b and HAT-P-7b
• 3.6 and 4.5 $\mu$m Phase Curves of the Highly-Irradiated Eccentric Hot Jupiter WASP-14b
• TESS Transit Timing of Hundreds of Hot Jupiters
• Repeatability and Accuracy of Exoplanet Eclipse Depths Measured with Post-Cryogenic Spitzer
• Empirical limb-darkening coefficients & transit parameters of known exoplanets from TESS
• ExoClock Project III: 450 new exoplanet ephemerides from ground and space observations
• A Comprehensive Reanalysis of $\text{Spitzer}$'s 4.5 $\mu$m Phase Curves, and the Phase Variations of the Ultra-hot Jupiters MASCARA-1b and KELT-16b
• ExoClock project II: A large-scale integrated study with 180 updated exoplanet ephemerides
• Dynamical Constraints on the Core Mass of Hot Jupiter HAT-P-13b
• Investigating the physical properties of transiting hot Jupiters with the 1.5-m Kuiper Telescope
• A More Informative Map: Inverting Thermal Orbital Phase and Eclipse Lightcurves of Exoplanets
• ExoClock Project: An open platform for monitoring the ephemerides of Ariel targets with contributions from the public
• Repeatability of Spitzer/IRAC exoplanetary eclipses with Independent Component Analysis
• A survey of exoplanet phase curves with Ariel
• A Lack of Variability Between Repeated Spitzer Phase Curves of WASP-43b
• Transit Timing Variation of XO-3b: Evidence for Tidal Evolution of Hot Jupiter with High Eccentricity
• Thermal Phase Curves of XO-3b: an Eccentric Hot Jupiter at the Deuterium Burning Limit
• Colour-magnitude diagrams of transiting Exoplanets -- III. A public code, nine strange planets, and the role of Phosphine
• Detecting General Relativistic Orbital Precession in Transiting Hot Jupiters
• TESS Timings of 31 Hot Jupiters with Ephemeris Uncertainties
• Affordable echelle spectroscopy of the eccentric HAT-P-2, WASP-14 and XO-3 planetary systems with a sub-meter-class telescope
• Precise Transit Photometry Using TESS: Updated Physical Properties for 28 Exoplanets Around Bright Stars
• Revisiting the Full Sets of Orbital Parameters for the XO-3 System: No evidence for Temporal Variation of the Spin-Orbit Angle
• Five new hot-Jupiter transits investigated with Swift-UVOT
• Atmospheric characterization of hot Jupiters using hierarchical models of Spitzer observations
• Random Forests applied to High Precision Photometry Analysis with Spitzer IRAC