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Ultrahot giant exoplanets receive thousands of times Earth’s insolation 1 , 2 . Their high-temperature atmospheres (greater than 2,000 kelvin) are ideal laboratories for studying extreme planetary climates and chemistry 3 – 5 . Daysides are predicted to be cloud-free, dominated by atomic species 6 and much hotter than nightsides 5 , 7 , 8 . Atoms are expected to recombine into molecules over the nightside 9 , resulting in different day and night chemistries. Although metallic elements and a large temperature contrast have been observed 10 – 14 , no chemical gradient has been measured across the surface of such an exoplanet. Different atmospheric chemistry between the day-to-night (‘evening’) and night-to-day (‘morning’) terminators could, however, be revealed as an asymmetric absorption signature during transit 4 , 7 , 15 . Here we report the detection of an asymmetric atmospheric signature in the ultrahot exoplanet WASP-76b. We spectrally and temporally resolve this signature using a combination of high-dispersion spectroscopy with a large photon-collecting area. The absorption signal, attributed to neutral iron, is blueshifted by −11 ± 0.7 kilometres per second on the trailing limb, which can be explained by a combination of planetary rotation and wind blowing from the hot dayside 16 . In contrast, no signal arises from the nightside close to the morning terminator, showing that atomic iron is not absorbing starlight there. We conclude that iron must therefore condense during its journey across the nightside. Absorption lines of iron in the dayside atmosphere of an ultrahot giant exoplanet disappear after travelling across the nightside, showing that the iron has condensed during its travel.

Ultra-hot giant exoplanets receive thousands of times Earth’s insolation1,2. Their high-temperature atmospheres (>2,000 K) are ideal laboratories for studying extreme planetary climates and chemistry3–5. Daysides are predicted to be cloud-free, dominated by atomic species6 and substantially hotter than nightsides5,7,8. Atoms are expected to recombine into molecules over the nightside9, resulting in different day-night chemistry. While metallic elements and a large temperature contrast have been observed10–14, no chemical gradient has been measured across the surface of such an exoplanet. Different atmospheric chemistry between the day-to-night (“evening”) and night-to-day (“morning”) terminators could, however, be revealed as an asymmetric absorption signature during transit4,7,15. Here, we report the detection of an asymmetric atmospheric signature in the ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-76b. We spectrally and temporally resolve this signature thanks to the combination of high-dispersion spectroscopy with a large photon-collecting area. The absorption signal, attributed to neutral iron, is blueshifted by −11±0.7 km s-1 on the trailing limb, which can be explained by a combination of planetary rotation and wind blowing from the hot dayside16. In contrast, no signal arises from the nightside close to the morning terminator, showing that atomic iron is not absorbing starlight there. Iron must thus condense during its journey across the nightside.

Astronomical data reduction is usually done with processing pipelines that consist of a series of individual processing steps that can be executed stand-alone. These processing steps are then strung together into workflows and fed with data to address a particular processing goal. In this paper, we propose a data processing system that automatically derives processing workflows for different use cases from a single specification of a cascade of processing steps. The system works by using formalized descriptions of data processing pipelines that specify the input and output of each processing step. Inputs can be existing data or the output of a previous step. Rules to select the most appropriate input data are directly attached to the description. A version of the proposed system has been implemented as the ESO Data Processing System (EDPS) in the Python language. The specification of processing cascades and data organisation rules use a restrictive set of Python classes, attributes and functions. The EDPS implementation of the proposed system was used to demonstrate that it is possible to automatically derive from a single specification of a pipeline processing cascade the workflows that the European Southern Observatory uses for quality control, archive production, and specialized science reduction. The EDPS will be used to replace all data reduction systems using different workflow specifications that are currently used at the European Southern Observatory.

Observations of metal absorption systems in the spectra of distant quasars allow to constrain a possible variation of the fine-structure constant throughout the history of the Universe. Such a test poses utmost demands on the wavelength accuracy and previous studies were limited by systematics in the spectrograph wavelength calibration. A substantial advance in the field is therefore expected from the new ultra-stable high-resolution spectrograph Espresso, recently installed at the VLT. In preparation of the fundamental physics related part of the Espresso GTO program, we present a thorough assessment of the Espresso wavelength accuracy and identify possible systematics at each of the different steps involved in the wavelength calibration process. Most importantly, we compare the default wavelength solution, based on the combination of Thorium-Argon arc lamp spectra and a Fabry-Pérot interferometer, to the fully independent calibration obtained from a laser frequency comb. We find wavelength-dependent discrepancies of up to 24m/s. This substantially exceeds the photon noise and highlights the presence of different sources of systematics, which we characterize in detail as part of this study. Nevertheless, our study demonstrates the outstanding accuracy of Espresso with respect to previously used spectrographs and we show that constraints of a relative change of the fine-structure constant at the \\(10^{-6}\\) level can be obtained with Espresso without being limited by wavelength calibration systematics.

Ultra-hot giant exoplanets receive thousands of times Earth's insolation. Their high-temperature atmospheres (>2,000 K) are ideal laboratories for studying extreme planetary climates and chemistry. Daysides are predicted to be cloud-free, dominated by atomic species and substantially hotter than nightsides. Atoms are expected to recombine into molecules over the nightside, resulting in different day-night chemistry. While metallic elements and a large temperature contrast have been observed, no chemical gradient has been measured across the surface of such an exoplanet. Different atmospheric chemistry between the day-to-night (\"evening\") and night-to-day (\"morning\") terminators could, however, be revealed as an asymmetric absorption signature during transit. Here, we report the detection of an asymmetric atmospheric signature in the ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-76b. We spectrally and temporally resolve this signature thanks to the combination of high-dispersion spectroscopy with a large photon-collecting area. The absorption signal, attributed to neutral iron, is blueshifted by -11+/-0.7 km s-1 on the trailing limb, which can be explained by a combination of planetary rotation and wind blowing from the hot dayside. In contrast, no signal arises from the nightside close to the morning terminator, showing that atomic iron is not absorbing starlight there. Iron must thus condense during its journey across the nightside.

A study of the empirical testing of US belief systems (BSy's) re internat'l conflict. It describes conceptual & methodological problems of ongoing res at a rather early stage, rather than results. 3 BSy's are described, intended to be generally acceptable to most members of each of the following groups: Position (A) for those who desire a more aggressive policy toward the USSR; (B) for those who accept the general lines of current policy; & (C) for those who desire a more aggressive policy toward the achievement of disarmament. Since each BSy is a coherent collection of assumptions about long range Soviet goals, strategies, & interpretations of Western behavior, the specific events we have chosen to focus on are Soviet actions. The B Sy's will attempt to predict the occurrence of conciliatory or refractory Soviet actions. A variable 'internat'l tension' is defined which includes the recent history of Western actions & Soviet reactions; it seems to yield a more meaningful measure of the overall conciliatory or refractory character of Western behavior in a given time period, & is used as the independent variable. Maximum differentiation among the predictions of the B Sy's occurs after a low tension period & no differentiation at all occurs after a high -7 period, which may explain why these B Sy's, with their frequently contradictory assumptions, are simultaneously able to sustain the beliefs of their followers. Positions A & B are the most distinguishable, making conflicting predictions under 6 conditions, while Positions B & C do so only 3 times. Positions A & C, which from their assumptions might appear to be most diametrically opposed, have only 5 conflicting predictions. AA.

The data reduction pipeline for the VLT 2nd generation instrument X-Shooter uses a physical model to determine the optical distortion and derive the wavelength calibration. The parameters of this model describe the positions, orientations, and other physical properties of the optical components in the spectrograph. They are updated by an optimisation process that ensures the best possible fit to arc lamp line positions. ESO Quality Control monitors these parameters along with all of the usual diagnostics. This enables us to look for correlations between inferred physical changes in the instrument and, for example, instrument temperature sensor readings.

Within the ESPRESSO project a new flexible data reduction library is being built. ESPRESSO, the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectral Observations is a fiber-fed, high-resolution, cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph. One of its main scientific goals is to search for terrestrial exoplanets using the radial velocity technique. A dedicated pipeline is being developed. It is designed to be able to reduce data from different similar spectrographs: not only ESPRESSO, but also HARPS, HARPS-N and possibly others. Instrument specifics are configurable through an input static configuration table. The first written recipes are already tested on HARPS and HARPS-N real data and ESPRESSO simulated data. The final scientific products of the pipeline will be the extracted 1-dim and 2-dim spectra. Using these products the radial velocity of the observed object can be computed with high accuracy. The library is developed within the standard ESO pipeline environment. It is being written in ANSI C and makes use of the Common Pipeline Library (CPL). It can be used in conjunction with the ESO tools Esorex, Gasgano and Reflex in the usual way.

The recently released Reflex scientific workflow environment supports the interactive execution of ESO VLT data reduction pipelines. Reflex is based upon the Kepler workflow engine, and provides components for organising the data, executing pipeline recipes based on the ESO Common Pipeline Library, invoking Python scripts, and constructing interaction loops. Reflex will greatly enhance the quick validation and reduction of the scientific data. In this paper we summarize the main features of Reflex, and demonstrate as an example its application to the reduction of echelle UVES data.