James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: A long spin period for a sub-Neptune-mass exoplanet

Paper abstract: HIP 41378 f is a sub-Neptune exoplanet with an anomalously low density. Its long orbital period and deep transit make it an ideal candidate for detecting oblateness photometrically. We present a new cross-platform, GPU-enabled code greenlantern, suitable for computing transit light curves of oblate planets at arbitrary orientations. We then use Markov Chain Monte Carlo to fit K2 data of HIP 41378 b, d, and f, specifically examining HIP 41378 f for possible oblateness and obliquity. We find that the flattening of HIP 41378 f is f <= 0.18 at the 95% confidence level, consistent with a rotation period of P_\text{rot} >= 22.2 hr. In the future, high-precision data from JWST has the potential to tighten such a constraint and can differentiate between spherical and flattened planets.