HST ROTATIONAL SPECTRAL MAPPING OF TWO L-TYPE BROWN DWARFS: VARIABILITY IN AND OUT OF WATER BANDS INDICATES HIGH-ALTITUDE HAZE LAYERS
- Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
- NASA Ames Research Center, Naval Air Station, Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA 94035 (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg (Germany)
- Département de Physique, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC H3C 3J7 (Canada)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON N6A 3K7 (Canada)
- Center for Astrophysics and Space Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 (United States)
- Imperial College London, 1010 Blackett Lab, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, MS 100-22, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Department of Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, 1629 East University Boulevard, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
We present time-resolved near-infrared spectroscopy of two L5 dwarfs, 2MASS J18212815+1414010 and 2MASS J15074759–1627386, observed with the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We study the wavelength dependence of rotation-modulated flux variations between 1.1 μm and 1.7 μm. We find that the water absorption bands of the two L5 dwarfs at 1.15 μm and 1.4 μm vary at similar amplitudes as the adjacent continuum. This differs from the results of previous HST observations of L/T transition dwarfs, in which the water absorption at 1.4 μm displays variations of about half of the amplitude at other wavelengths. We find that the relative amplitude of flux variability out of the water band with respect to that in the water band shows a increasing trend from the L5 dwarfs toward the early T dwarfs. We utilize the models of Saumon and Marley and find that the observed variability of the L5 dwarfs can be explained by the presence of spatially varying high-altitude haze layers above the condensate clouds. Therefore, our observations show that the heterogeneity of haze layers—the driver of the variability—must be located at very low pressures, where even the water opacity is negligible. In the near future, the rotational spectral mapping technique could be utilized for other atomic and molecular species to probe different pressure levels in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and exoplanets and uncover both horizontal and vertical cloud structures.
- OSTI ID:
- 22364737
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 798, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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