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The transmission spectrum of the potentially rocky planet L 98-59 c

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arxiv 2301.10866 v2 pith:UN7AYWGX submitted 2023-01-25 astro-ph.EP

The transmission spectrum of the potentially rocky planet L 98-59 c

classification astro-ph.EP
keywords spectrumplanetadditionalcollecteddatastarstellartransmission
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We present observations of the 1.35+/-0.07 Earth-radius planet L 98-59 c, collected using Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. L 98-59 is a nearby (10.6 pc), bright (H=7.4 mag), M3V star that harbors three small, transiting planets. As one of the closest known transiting multi-planet systems, L 98-59 offers one of the best opportunities to probe and compare the atmospheres of rocky planets that formed in the same stellar environment. We measured the transmission spectrum of L 98-59 c and the extracted spectrum showed marginal evidence (2.1{\sigma}) for wavelength-dependent transit depth variations that could indicate the presence of an atmosphere. We forward-modeled possible atmospheric compositions of the planet based on the transmission spectrum. Although L 98-59 was previously thought to be a fairly quiet star, we have seen evidence for stellar activity, and therefore we assessed a scenario where the source of the signal originates with inhomogeneities on stellar surface. We also see a correlation between transits of L 98-59 c and L 98-59 b collected 12.5 hours apart, which is suggestive (but at <2{\sigma} confidence) of a contaminating component from the star impacting the exoplanet spectrum. While intriguing, our results are inconclusive and additional data is needed to verify any atmospheric signal. Fortunately, additional data has been collected from both HST and JWST. Should this result be confirmed with additional data, L 98-59 c would be the first planet smaller than two Earth-radii with a detected atmosphere.

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Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Quantifying the Impact of Starspot-Crossing Events on Retrieved Parameters from Transit Lightcurves

    astro-ph.EP 2025-11 conditional novelty 6.0

    Fitting starspot-crossing events recovers transit depths better than masking in high-SNR, high-contamination cases; small/faint spots can overcorrect, and SCEs inflate depth uncertainties at JWST precision.