The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems VIII: patchy forsterite and enstatite clouds in the atmosphere of VHS 1256 b, retrieval lessons learned and outlook to the future

arXiv:2608.06583 · astro-ph.EP · Submitted 2026-08-06 · Read on arXiv

Niall Whiteford, Jacqueline K. Faherty, Ben Burningham, Johanna M. Vos, Simon Petrus, Polychronis Patapis, Beth A. Biller, Andrew Skemer, Sasha Hinkley, Emily Calamari, Genaro Suárez, Kelle L. Cruz, Brittany E. Miles, Aarynn L. Carter, Francisco A. Martinez, Melanie J. Rowland, Olivier Absil, Arthur D. Adams, William O. Balmer, Anthony Boccaletti, Mariangela Bonavita, Mickaël Bonnefoy, Mark Booth, Brendan P. Bowler, Zackery W. Briesemeister, Marta L. Bryan, Per Calissendorff, Faustine Cantalloube, Benjamin Charnay, Gaël Chauvin, Christine H. Chen, Elodie Choquet, Valentin Christiaens, Gabriele Cugno, Thayne Currie, Camilla Danielski, Matthew De Furio, Trent J. Dupuy, Samuel M. Factor, Michael P. Fitzgerald, Jonathan J. Fortney, Kyle Franson, Julien H. Girard, Eileen C. Gonzales, Carol A. Grady, Thomas Henning, Dean C. Hines, Callie E. Hood, Kielan K. W. Hoch, Alex R. Howe, Markus Janson, Paul Kalas, Jens Kammerer, Grant M. Kennedy, Pierre Kervella, Minjae Kim, Daniel Kitzmann, Adam L. Kraus, Masayuki Kuzuhara, Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Anne-Marie Lagrange, Kellen Lawson, Cecilia Lazzoni, Jarron M. Leisenring, Ben W. P. Lew, Michael C. Liu, Pengyu Liu, Jorge Llop-Sayson, James P. Lloyd, Anna Lueber, Bruce Macintosh, Mathilde Mâlin, Elena Manjavacas, Sebastián Marino, Mark S. Marley, Christian Marois, Raquel A. Martinez, Elisabeth C. Matthews, Brenda C. Matthews, Dimitri Mawet, Johan Mazoyer, Michael W. McElwain, Stanimir Metchev, Michael R. Meyer, Maxwell A. Millar-Blanchaer, Paul Mollière, Sarah E. Moran, Caroline V. Morley, Sagnick Mukherjee, Paulina Palma-Bifani, Eric Pantin, Marshall D. Perrin, Laurent Pueyo, Sascha P. Quanz, Andreas Quirrenbach, Shrishmoy Ray, Isabel Rebollido, Jea Adams Redai, Bin B. Ren, Emily Rickman, Steph Sallum, Matthias Samland, Benjamin Sargent, Joshua E. Schlieder, Karl R. Stapelfeldt, Jordan M. Stone, Ben J. Sutlieff, Motohide Tamura, Xianyu Tan, Christopher A. Theissen, Pascal Tremblin, Taichi Uyama, Malavika Vasist, Arthur Vigan, Kevin Wagner, Jason J. Wang, Kimberly Ward-Duong, Schuyler G. Wolff, Kadin Worthen, Mark C. Wyatt, Marie Ygouf, Alice Zurlo, Xi Zhang, Keming Zhang, Zhoujian Zhang, Yifan Zhou

astro-ph.EP

Submitted: 2026-08-06

Updated: 2026-08-10

Comments: Accepted for publication in ApJL. 28 Pages. 12 Figures

Code: https://github.com/substellar/brewster

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

Terminology

• Abundance — 20× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Spectral Signature — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Adam — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Calibration — 2× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Degeneracy — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Trace — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• AURA for the European Space Agency — 1× in this paper
• Accuracy — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Metallicity — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Physical Constraints — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Robustness — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes

Sources

• TauREx III: A fast, dynamic and extendable framework for retrievals
• Strict Upper Limits on the Carbon-to-Oxygen Ratios of Eight Hot Jupiters from Self-Consistent Atmospheric Retrieval
• The JWST Weather Report from the Nearest Brown Dwarfs I: multi-period JWST NIRSpec + MIRI monitoring of the benchmark binary brown dwarf WISE 1049AB
• Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of Extrasolar Planets
• Retrieval of SDSS J1416+1348AB
• Empirically Determining Substellar Cloud Compositions in the era of JWST
• Retrieving scattering clouds and disequilibrium chemistry in the atmosphere of HR 8799e
• The Sonora Substellar Atmosphere Models. III. Diamondback: Atmospheric Properties, Spectra, and Evolution for Warm Cloudy Substellar Objects
• Four-of-a-kind? Comprehensive atmospheric characterisation of the HR 8799 planets with VLTI/GRAVITY
• Retrieving Young Cloudy L-Dwarfs: A Nearby Planetary-Mass Companion BD+60 1417B and Its Isolated Red Twin W0047
• Bayesian Model Comparison and Significance: Widespread Errors and how to Correct Them
• On the Chemical Abundance of HR 8799 and the Planet c
• PLATON II: New Capabilities And A Comprehensive Retrieval on HD 189733b Transit and Eclipse Data

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