Probing the atmosphere of WASP-69 b with low- and high-resolution transmission spectroscopy
Consideration of both low- and high-resolution transmission spectroscopy is key for obtaining a comprehensive picture of exoplanet atmospheres. In studies of transmission spectra, the continuum information is well established with low-resolution spectra, while the shapes of individual lines are best constrained with high-resolution observations. In this work, we aim to merge high- with low-resolution transmission spectroscopy to place tighter constraints on physical parameters of the atmospheres. We present the analysis of three primary transits of WASP-69 b in the visible (VIS) channel of the CARMENES instrument and perform a combined low- and high-resolution analysis using additional data from HARPS-N, OSIRIS/GTC, and WFC3/HST already available in the literature. We investigate the Na I D1 and D2 doublet, Hα, the Ca II infra-red triplet (IRT), and K I λ7699 Å lines, and we monitor the stellar photometric variability by performing long-term photometric observations with the STELLA telescope. During the first CARMENES observing night, we detected the planet Na I D2 and D1 lines at ∼7 and ∼3σ significance levels, respectively. We measured a D2/D1 intensity ratio of 2.5 ± 0.7, which is in agreement with previous HARPS-N observations. Our modelling of WFC3 and OSIRIS data suggests strong Rayleigh scattering, solar to super-solar water abundance, and a highly muted Na feature in the atmosphere of this planet, in agreement with previous investigations of this target. We use the continuum information retrieved from the low-resolution spectroscopy as a prior to break the degeneracy between the Na abundance, reference pressure, and thermosphere temperature for the high-resolution spectroscopic analysis. We fit the Na I D1 and D2 lines individually and find that the posterior distributions of the model parameters agree with each other within 1σ. Our results suggest that local thermodynamic equilibrium processes can explain the observed D2 /D1 ratio because the presence of haze opacity mutes the absorption features. © 2021 ESO. ; CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l'Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Cen tro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. We acknowledge financial support from the DFG through priority program SPP 1992 "Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets" (KH 472/3-1) and through grant CA 1795/3, NASA through ROSES-2016/Exoplanets Research Program (NNX17AC03G), the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (694513), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4] and the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "María de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. ; Peer reviewed