We continue with Jonathan Fortney on GJ436 b - the original archetype #warm#Neptune
It has an intriguingly “large” eccentricity (I disagree that 0.14 is large sorry 🤓).
Thermal emission from the planet showed to be different for the #Spitzer points, at the time explained through atmospheric chemistry: non-equilibrium + mixing.
Reanalysis + follow-up showed a lower point at 3.6 micron, so less bright, but still brighter. Suggestion: tidal heating driving up the interior? #ExSSV
The favoured explanation was a strong methane depletion due to tidal heating (hot interior) + vertical mixing. In the Spitzer era, this was the explanation, so they wanted to look at these kinds of planet with #JWST.
Plenty of visits with #JWST show a much much shallower 3.6 micron eclipse. While a must deeper at 4.5 micron (sorry I didn’t catch that plot).
So these observations with #JWST, agreeing with each other, but disagreeing with Spitzer. #ExSSV
The disk imaging part is still in progress, so we’ll skip to aperture masking interferometry: this enables imaging below the diffraction limit.
This allows probing a new parameter space closer to the star.
This sounds great, but there are some problems 🫣 The contrast is ~1-2 mag shallower due to charge leaking between neighbouring pixels (bleeding charge). And this is something that needs to be addressed!! #ExSSV
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