01/03/2026 - Exoplanets

Hot and cloudy: high temperature clouds in super-Earths and sub-Neptunes

James Webb Space Telescope observations provide for the first time evidence for an atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet ─ 55 Cnc e. The atmosphere of 55 Cnc e is hot with ${T}_{text{eq}}gt 2000$ K and shows strong variability, for which cloud formation above a molten crust could be one possible explanation. The composition of the…

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01/03/2026 - Exoplanets

A JWST Transit of a Jupiter Analog. I. Constraints on the Oblateness of Kepler-167 e

In 2024 October, JWST observed a transit of Kepler-167 e, a Jupiter-analog planet on a 1000+ day orbit. These observations, recorded over a long baseline of nearly 60 hr, were designed to search for signatures of planetary oblateness and/or exomoons comparable to Ganymede. In this first in a series of studies analyzing these data, we…

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01/03/2026 - Exoplanets

The MUSCLES Extension for Atmospheric Transmission Spectroscopy: Spectral Energy Distributions for 20 Exoplanet Host Stars that JWST Observed in Cycle 1

Correctly interpreting JWST spectra of close-in exoplanets requires a measurement of the X-ray and ultraviolet light that the planets receive from their host stars. Here, we provide spectral energy distributions (SEDs) covering the range ≍5─1 × 107 Å for 20 transiting exoplanet host stars observed in JWST Cycle 1. The SEDs are constructed out of…

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