Program: GN-2015B-Q-44

The Kepler space telescope has been very productive, not only in finding new planets, but also in characterising exoplanet atmospheres. The continuous observing makes the Kepler data ideal for measuring the planetary phase variations. In Esteves et al. (2015), we analysed the phase curves of 14 Kepler planets, and found that for seven of them the maximum brightness did not occur at mid-eclipse. For the cooler planets, the offset is towards the morning side, potentially indicative of clouds, while for the hotter planets it is towards the evening side, suggestive of a hot spot transported eastward by a strong jet, as predicted by circulation models. The implication is that for the hottest planets we are looking mainly at thermal emission, while for the cooler planets the light we see is primarily starlight reflected by the planet’s atmosphere. However, since the Kepler bandpass is very broad, it is hard to disentangle reflected light from thermal emission. We propose to conduct a pilot program using NIRI at Gemini North to observe the secondary eclipse of Kepler-76b in order to determine the origin of its emission. In the next semester we will expand the sample with the cooler planets, for which there are no good eclipses observable in 15B semester.