Ground-based detections of sodium in HD 209458b's atmosphere in two data sets

Abstract

AbstractWe present two separate ground-based detections of sodium in the transmission spectrum of HD 209458b. First we reanalyzed an archival data set from the HDS spectrograph on Subaru, which shows sodium at a >5σ level. Secondly, our preliminary results of a UVES/VLT data set indicate sodium absorption at a similar level, although the data cover the eclipse only partially. Both results are fully consistent with the HST results of Charbonneau et al. (2002). The Na D absorption feature seems to be resolved in the narrowest passband.