Low Dispersion Survey Spectrograph 3C (LDSS-3C) tagged posts

This artist’s concept depicts a planetary system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

HAT-P-26b is an inflated, Neptune-mass exoplanet 437 light years from Earth, which orbits its parent star HAT-P-26 every 4.23 days. The planet has a relatively low surface gravity that is well suited for atmospheric characterization. To determine composition of HAT-P-26b’s atmosphere and finding traces of water vapor in it, the scientists made use of data provided by the Low Dispersion Survey Spectrograph 3C (LDSS-3C) instrument and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. LDSS-3C is an optical imager and (multi-) slit spectrograph on the 6.5m Magellan II (Clay) telescope, Chile.

They observed the primary transit of HAT-P-26b with LDSS-3C on Apr...