Program: GN-2014B-Q-47

During the last few decades a significant increase in the knowledge of our Solar System planetary atmospheres has been taking place. This fact motivated further studies, focused on extrasolar planets instead. The main goal is to understand how planets form and evolve. To fulfill this end, the primary transit systems present an outstanding opportunity to study the properties of exoplanet atmospheres. During these events, we can register how the stellar light picks up spectral information about the planetary atmospheres on its way toward us. Our porposal focuses on the study of the atmospheric composition of Qatar-1. Our group has been following-up the system for the last two years, collecting more than 40 primary transit light curves to produce transit timing variation analysis, and more than two months of H-alpha stellar flux that pin-points Qatar-1A to be a moderately active star. This fact, and the nearly grazing transit events present the most adequate conditions to study the exoplanet atmosphere in transmission. Therefore, we propose to observe the Qatar-1 system during two primary transits, using Gemini-GMOS in MOS mode. Repeated short integrations will provide dense time sampling. Differential spectro-photometry will be used to obtain wavelenght-resolved light-curves from the data.