GeminiFocus October 2013 | Page 7

the structure rotates to keep the GMOS slit mask aligned on the stars.) The origin of this effect is unknown and is currently being investigated. However, we found that it can be modeled (black lines in the top two panels of Figure 1) and removed from the data. In Figure 2, we show the corrected high-precision spectroscopic light curves that we obtained with GMOS-N by binning the data for the first night over 15-nm-wide spectral channels. The measured transit depths vary as a function of wavelength; this gives us the planet’s transmission spectrum, which in turn, tells us about its atmospheric composition. Because WASP-12b’s orbital period is clo ͔