1111.2363 (Jasmina Blecic et al.)

Thermal Emission of WASP-14b Revealed with Three Spitzer Eclipses    [PDF]

Jasmina Blecic, Joseph Harrington, Nikku Madhusudhan, Kevin B. Stevenson, Ryan A. Hardy, Christopher J. Campo, William C. Bowman, Sarah Nymeyer, Patricio Cubillos, David R. Anderson

WASP-14b belongs to a class of highly irradiated hot Jupiters (Teq = 1866 K) with a mass of 7.3 \pm 0.5 MJ and a radius of 1.28 \pm 0.08 RJ . With a mean density of 4.6 gcm-3, this transiting planet is one of the densest known to date (Joshi et al. 2009), for planets with periods less than 3 days. We present analytic light-curve models for three Spitzer secondary eclipses, Keplerian orbital model, estimates of infrared brightness temperatures, and constraints on atmospheric composition and thermal structure. Although extremely irradiated, WASP-14b does not show any distinctive evidence of a thermal inversion, based on existing observations. In addition, the observations indicate low day-night redistribution (fr<0.25) and are consistent with chemical compositions at nearly solar abundances. We confirm a significant eccentricity of e = 0.087 \pm 0.002 and refine other orbital parameters.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2363