The dark and featureless surface of rocky exoplanet LHS 3844 b from JWST mid-infrared spectroscopy

arXiv:2605.00100 · astro-ph.EP · Submitted 2026-04-30 · Read on arXiv

Sebastian Zieba, Laura Kreidberg, Brandon P. Coy, Aaron Bello-Arufe, Kimberly Paragas, Xintong Lyu, Renyu Hu, Aishwarya Iyer, Edwin S. Kite, Daniel D. B. Koll, Kay Wohlfarth, Emerson Whittaker, Heather Knutson, Robin Wordsworth, Caroline Morley, Laura Schaefer

astro-ph.EP

Submitted: 2026-04-30

Comments: Accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy on April 8, 2026. 49 pages, 18 figures, 7 tables. The arXiv version corresponds to the original submitted manuscript and will be updated with a post-acceptance version at a later time

DOI: 10.1038/s41550-026-02860-3

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Trace — 19× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Abundance — 9× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Calibration — 8× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Aperture — 5× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Core — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Forward modeling — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes — 3× in this paper
• Metallicity — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — 2× in this paper
• Aperture Photometry — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Benchmarking — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Transmission spectroscopy — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• A First Look at the JWST MIRI/LRS Phase Curve of WASP-43b
• Exoplaneteers Keep Calling Plots "Allan Variance" Plots When They Aren't
• EXOFASTv2: A public, generalized, publication-quality exoplanet modeling code
• The Spherical Bolometric Albedo of Planet Mercury

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