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Searching for Planets Orbiting Vega with the James Webb Space Telescope

  • Authors: Charles Beichman, Geoffrey Bryden, Jorge Llop-Sayson, Marie Ygouf, Alexandra Greenbaum, Jarron Leisenring, Andras Gaspar, John Krist, George Rieke, Schuyler Wolff, Kate Su, Klaus Hodapp, Michael Meyer, Doug Kelly, Martha Boyer, Doug Johnstone, Scott Horner, Marcia Rieke

Charles Beichman et al 2025 The Astronomical Journal 169 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 2.

Left: our detection limits are shown for each filter (F210M and F444W) as a function of separation from the parent star, in terms of contrast ratio (right-side axis) and apparent magnitude (left-side axis). The drop in detectability at ∼9″ corresponds to the boundary between subarray and full-frame imaging. The limits are given as 5σ. The pre-JWST contrast limit at M band from Keck (B. B. Ren et al. 2023) is shown as a dashed line for comparison; the JWST detections limits are a factor of ∼10 better within ∼2″, and improve even further at larger separations. Right: the flux sensitivities on the left are translated to 5σ detection limits in terms of planet mass. For a nominal system age of 700 Myr, two models of atmosphere evolution are considered—BEX-HELIOS (solid line; E. F. Linder et al. 2019) and Ames-COND (dashed line; I. Baraffe et al. 2003)—with similar results from both. A younger age (e.g., 450 Myr; J. Yoon et al. 2010) would correspond to planet masses lower by ∼30% (dotted line), while the upper limit from J. D. Monnier et al. (2012; 850 Myr) would result in slightly higher masses (dotted–dashed line).

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