K-dwarf starspot hunters: how to directly characterize spot and faculae properties with UV-IR panchromatic transit spectra
Abstract
Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets provides an important window into their atmospheric composition, structure and dynamics, especially in the JWST era. As the quality of the observational data and therefore the precision of our constraints improves, we become increasingly sensitive to sources of systematic bias in our models and observations. One significant example of this is the Transit Light Source Effect, in which heterogeneous features in the stellar photosphere - spots and faculae - imprint additional spectral signatures onto exoplanet transmission spectra. The effects of this stellar contamination must be accounted for or removed in order to accurately recover the planet's atmospheric properties. Including parameterized models of spots and faculae within spectral retrieval analysis is increasingly adopted as a solution to this problem, but is limited by the accuracy of models of stellar spectra. In this paper, we outline an observational strategy combining simultaneous data from JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope that would enable us to further constrain these models. We perform synthetic retrievals to demonstrate how we could constrain starspot and faculae parameters; we test the impact of using different model spectra in the retrieval; and we consider the impact of variable stellar activity on coadding transits to achieve the desired signal-to-noise. We find that ultraviolet and optical wavelengths are key for breaking degeneracies between stellar contamination and planetary parameters.
Related
- Starspot Activity and Third-body Perturbations in the Eclipsing Binary KIC 9451096
- BS Cassiopeiae: A Contact Binary with Starspot-driven Variability and Evidence for Additional Components
- BS Cassiopeiae: A Contact Binary with Starspot-Driven Variability and Evidence for Additional Components
- The bar-driven central complex of NGC 6946: A panchromatic and spatially resolved view of its star formation history and interstellar medium
- PHAROS: Panchromatic spectral energy distributions of solar-like stars across evolutionary stages
BibTeX
@misc{barstow2026kdwarf,
title = {{K-dwarf starspot hunters: how to directly characterize spot and faculae properties with UV-IR panchromatic transit spectra}},
author = {Joanna K. Barstow and Caitlyn Cullen and Yvonne Unruh and Hannah Wakeford and Eva-Maria Ahrer and Lili Alderson and Charlotte Fairman and Ulrich Kolb and Nikole Lewis and Cinta Vidante},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.35676},
eprint = {2609.35676},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35676},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - K-dwarf starspot hunters: how to directly characterize spot and faculae properties with UV-IR panchromatic transit spectra
AU - Joanna K. Barstow
AU - Caitlyn Cullen
AU - Yvonne Unruh
AU - Hannah Wakeford
AU - Eva-Maria Ahrer
AU - Lili Alderson
AU - Charlotte Fairman
AU - Ulrich Kolb
AU - Nikole Lewis
AU - Cinta Vidante
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.35676
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35676
AB - Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets provides an important window into their atmospheric composition, structure and dynamics, especially in the JWST era. As the quality of the observational data and therefore the precision of our constraints improves, we become increasingly sensitive to sources of systematic bias in our models and observations. One significant example of this is the Transit Light Source Effect, in which heterogeneous features in the stellar photosphere - spots and faculae - imprint additional spectral signatures onto exoplanet transmission spectra. The effects of this stellar contamination must be accounted for or removed in order to accurately recover the planet's atmospheric properties. Including parameterized models of spots and faculae within spectral retrieval analysis is increasingly adopted as a solution to this problem, but is limited by the accuracy of models of stellar spectra. In this paper, we outline an observational strategy combining simultaneous data from JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope that would enable us to further constrain these models. We perform synthetic retrievals to demonstrate how we could constrain starspot and faculae parameters; we test the impact of using different model spectra in the retrieval; and we consider the impact of variable stellar activity on coadding transits to achieve the desired signal-to-noise. We find that ultraviolet and optical wavelengths are key for breaking degeneracies between stellar contamination and planetary parameters.
ER -