The GROUSE project

III. K_s-band observations of the thermal emission from WASP-33b^⋆,⋆⋆

¹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Postbus 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
² Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada
e-mail: demooij@astro.utoronto.ca
³ SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands
⁴ Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Apartado de Correos 321, 38700 Santa Cruz de la Palma, Canary Islands, Spain

Received: 17 April 2012
Accepted: 3 December 2012

Abstract

Context. In recent years, day-side emission from about a dozen hot Jupiters has been detected through ground-based secondary eclipse observations in the near-infrared. These near-infrared observations are vital for determining the energy budgets of hot Jupiters, since they probe the planet’s spectral energy distribution near its peak.

Aims. The aim of this work is to measure the K_s-band secondary eclipse depth of WASP-33b, the first planet discovered to transit an A-type star. This planet receives the highest level of irradiation of all transiting planets discovered to date. Furthermore, its host-star shows pulsations and is classified as a low-amplitude δ Scuti.

Methods. As part of our GROUnd-based Secondary Eclipse (GROUSE) project we have obtained observations of two separate secondary eclipses of WASP-33b in the K_s-band using the LIRIS instrument on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). The telescope was significantly defocused to avoid saturation of the detector for this bright star (K ~ 7.5). To increase the stability and the cadence of the observations, they were performed in staring mode. We collected a total of 5100 and 6900 frames for the first and the second night respectively, both with an average cadence of 3.3 s.

Results. On the second night the eclipse is detected at the 12 -σ level, with a measured eclipse depth of 0.244_-0.020^+0.027%. This eclipse depth corresponds to a brightness temperature of 3270_-160⁺¹¹⁵ K. The measured brightness temperature on the second night is consistent with the expected equilibrium temperature for a planet with a very low albedo and a rapid re-radiation of the absorbed stellar light. For the other night the short out-of-eclipse baseline prevents good corrections for the stellar pulsations and systematic effects, which makes this dataset unreliable for eclipse depth measurements. This demonstrates the need of getting a sufficient out-of-eclipse baseline.