Bibcode
Challener, Ryan C.; Weiner Mansfield, Megan; Cubillos, Patricio E.; Piette, Anjali A. A.; Coulombe, Louis-Philippe; Beltz, Hayley; Blecic, Jasmina; Rauscher, Emily; Bean, Jacob L.; Benneke, Björn; Kempton, Eliza M.-R.; Harrington, Joseph; Komacek, Thaddeus D.; Parmentier, Vivien; Casewell, S. L.; Iro, Nicolas; Mancini, Luigi; Nixon, Matthew C.; Radica, Michael; Steinrueck, Maria E.; Welbanks, Luis; Batalha, Natalie M.; Caceres, Claudio; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Crouzet, Nicolas; Désert, Jean-Michel; Molaverdikhani, Karan; Nikolov, Nikolay K.; Palle, Enric; Rackham, Benjamin V.; Schlawin, Everett; Sing, David K.; Stevenson, Kevin B.; Tan, Xianyu; Turner, Jake D.; Zhang, Xi
Bibliographical reference
Nature Astronomy
Advertised on:
12
2025
Citations
1
Refereed citations
0
Description
Highly irradiated giant exoplanets known `ultrahot Jupiters' are anticipated to exhibit large variations of atmospheric temperature and chemistry as a function of longitude, latitude and altitude. Previous observations have hinted at these variations, but the existing data have been fundamentally restricted to probing hemisphere-integrated spectra, thereby providing only coarse information on atmospheric gradients. Here we present a spectroscopic eclipse map of an extrasolar planet, resolving the atmosphere in multiple dimensions simultaneously. We analyse a secondary eclipse of the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-18b observed with the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument on the JWST. The mapping reveals weaker longitudinal temperature gradients than were predicted by theoretical models, indicating the importance of hydrogen dissociation and/or nightside clouds in shaping global thermal emission. In addition, we identify two thermally distinct regions of the planet's atmosphere: a `hotspot' surrounding the substellar point and a `ring' near the dayside limbs. The hotspot region shows a strongly inverted thermal structure due to the presence of optical absorbers and a water abundance marginally lower than the hemispheric average, in accordance with theoretical predictions. The ring region shows colder temperatures and poorly constrained chemical abundances. Similar future analyses will reveal the three-dimensional thermal, chemical and dynamical properties of a broad range of exoplanet atmospheres.
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Exoplanets and Astrobiology
The search for life in the universe has been driven by recent discoveries of planets around other stars (known as exoplanets), becoming one of the most active fields in modern astrophysics. The growing number of new exoplanets discovered in recent years and the recent advance on the study of their atmospheres are not only providing new valuable
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