Kavli Affiliate: Bruce Macintosh
| First 5 Authors: , , , ,
| Summary:
Young exoplanets provide a critical link between understanding planet
formation and atmospheric evolution. Direct imaging spectroscopy allows us to
infer the properties of young, wide orbit, giant planets with high
signal-to-noise. This allows us to compare this young population to exoplanets
characterized with transmission spectroscopy, which has indirectly revealed the
presence of clouds, photochemistry, and a diversity of atmospheric
compositions. Direct detections have also been made for brown dwarfs, but
direct studies of young giant planets in the mid-infrared were not possible
prior to JWST. With two exoplanets around a solar type star, the YSES-1 system
is an ideal laboratory for studying this early phase of exoplanet evolution. We
report the first direct observations of silicate clouds in the atmosphere of
the exoplanet YSES-1 c through its 9-11 micron absorption feature, and the
first circumplanetary disk silicate emission around its sibling planet, YSES-1
b. The clouds of YSES-1 c are composed of either amorphous iron-enriched
pyroxene or a combination of amorphous MgSiO3 and Mg2SiO4, with particle sizes
of less than or equal to 0.1 micron at 1 millibar of pressure. We attribute the
emission from the disk around YSES-1 b to be from submicron olivine dust
grains, which may have formed through collisions of planet-forming bodies in
the disk.
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