Spatially Scanned STIS Spectra of the Exoplanet Host Star 55 Cnc

We discuss the analysis of two sets of optical/near-IR spectra of the exoplanet host star 55 Cnc, obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and grating G750L in spatial scanning mode, in order to assess the performance of that relatively new observing mode for studies of transiting exoplanets. Standard pipeline reductions of the CCD spectral images were augmented by custom procedures for removing both cosmic rays and the strong fringing seen at wavelengths longer than 7000 A. Both total ("white-light") fluxes and the fluxes for narrower wavelength intervals were extracted from the processed spectral images. Apart from slight (about 400 ppm) orbit-to-orbit offsets between the relative fluxes in each set, the patterns exhibited by the flux values within each orbit are very similar. The systematic differences in the fluxes are somewhat smaller than those seen in STIS spectra of 55 Cnc obtained in "stare mode", where the CCD is deliberately saturated at a fixed pointing. A parameterized detrending method similar to those commonly used to remove instrumental effects from time series observations of exoplanet host stars was then applied to the extracted fluxes. For the total fluxes, the scatter about the detrending models is about 30-40 ppm -- comparable to the best precision previously obtained for time series photometry with HST -- but is somewhat larger for narrower wavelength bins. The depth of the transit of the super-Earth 55 Cnc e (about 450 ppm for the total flux) is consistent with previous values. Both the scan-mode and the stare-mode observations of 55 Cnc e appear to indicate an unexpected (and variable?) increase in the transit radius Rp/Rs between 0.55 and 1.0 μ m. While these data are somewhat limited, they do suggest that spatial scanning with the STIS CCD can provide high-quality optical/near-IR spectra of the brighter exoplanet hosts. (edited)