English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Exoplanet research focusing on the characterization of super-Earths iscurrently limited to those handful targets orbiting bright stars that areamenable to detailed study. This Letter proposes to look at alternative avenuesto probe the surface and atmospheric properties of this category of planets,known to be ubiquitous in our galaxy. I conduct Markov Chain Monte Carlolightcurve analyses for 97 Kepler close-in $R_P \lesssim 2.0 R_{\oplus}$super-Earth candidates with the aim to detect their occultations at visiblewavelengths. Brightness temperatures and geometric albedos in the Keplerbandpass are constrained for 27 super-Earth candidates. A hierarchical Bayesianmodeling approach is then employed to characterize the population-levelreflective properties of these close-in super-Earths. I find median geometricalbedos $A_g$ in the Kepler bandpass ranging between 0.16 and 0.30, oncedecontaminated from thermal emission. These super-Earths geometric albedos arestatistically larger than for hot Jupiters, which have medians $A_g$ rangingbetween 0.06 and 0.11. A subset of objects, including Kepler-10b, exhibitsignificantly larger albedos ($A_g\gtrsim$0.4). I argue that a betterunderstanding of the incidence of stellar irradiation on planetary surface andatmospheric processes is key to explain the diversity in albedos observed forclose-in super-Earths.

The Albedos of Kepler's Close-in super-Earths