Exoplanet atmospheres at high resolution through a modest-size telescope

Bello-Arufe, Aaron; Buchhave, Lars A.; Mendonça, João M.; Tronsgaard, René; Heng, Kevin; Hoeijmakers, H. Jens; Mayo, Andrew W. (2022). Exoplanet atmospheres at high resolution through a modest-size telescope. Astronomy and astrophysics, 662(A51), A51. EDP Sciences 10.1051/0004-6361/202142787

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Ground-based, high-resolution spectrographs are providing us with an unprecedented view of the dynamics and chemistry of the atmospheres of planets outside the Solar System. While there are a large number of stable and precise high-resolution spectrographs on modest-size telescopes, it is the spectrographs at observatories with apertures larger than 3.5 m that dominate the atmospheric follow-up of exoplanets. In this work we explore the potential of characterising exoplanetary atmospheres with FIES, a high-resolution spectrograph at the 2.56 m Nordic Optical Telescope. We observed two transits of MASCARA-2 b (also known as KELT-20 b) and one transit of KELT-9 b to search for atomic iron, a species that has recently been discovered in both neutral and ionised forms in the atmospheres of these ultra-hot Jupiters using large telescopes. Using a cross-correlation method, we detect a signal of Fe II at the 4.5σ and 4.0σ level in the transits of MaSCARA-2 b. We also detect Fe II in the transit of KELT-9 b at the 8.5σ level. Although we do not find any significant Doppler shift in the signal of MASCARA-2 b, we do measure a moderate blueshift (3–6 km s−1) of the feature in KELT-9 b, which might be a manifestation of high-velocity winds transporting Fe II from the planetary dayside to the nightside. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of investigating exoplanet atmospheres with FIES, and it potentially unlocks a wealth of additional atmosphere detections with this and other high-resolution spectrographs mounted on similar-size telescopes.

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