paper

Atmospheric asymmetries in WASP-121 b revealed by rotational transits detected with JWST

arXiv:2606.19487 · doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02887-6

Abstract

Close-in exoplanets are tidally locked to their host star and thus exhibit extreme atmospheric temperature gradients. It has been theorized that the fraction of star light absorbed by such planets during transit changes as a function of orbital phase as progressively hotter or colder atmospheric gas rotates into view, but this effect has not been observed so far. Here, we show that two transits of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121 b, acquired with JWST/NIRSpec and NIRISS, exhibit asymmetric transit light curves caused by the planet's rotation during transit. We observe increasing CO absorption and slightly decreasing HO absorption in the transmission spectrum, as the planet rotates. These results are indicative of a stronger longitudinal temperature gradient across the evening than across the morning terminator, consistent with higher temperatures in the eastern half than in the western half of the dayside. The observed changes of the transmission spectrum with orbital phase are in line with the temperature increase causing thermal dissociation of HO, while CO remains abundant. The observation of longitudinal gradients of atmospheric temperature and chemistry from the planet's rotational transit provides a new probe for constraining atmospheric heterogeneity using JWST beyond differences between morning and evening terminators from limb asymmetries.

33 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, including Extended Data. Published in Nature Astronomy. Algorithms for fitting light curves used in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20734079

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