HST Transmission Spectra of the Hot Neptune HD 219666 b: Detection of Water and the Challenge of Constraining Both Water and Methane

Abstract Although Neptunian-sized (2–5 R ⊕ ) planets appear to be extremely common in the Galaxy, many mysteries remain about their overall nature. To date, only 11 Neptunian-sized planets have had their atmospheres spectroscopically characterized, and these observations hint at interesting diversity within this class of planets. Much of our understanding of these worlds and others derive from transmission spectroscopy with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (HST/WFC3). One key outcome of HST/WFC3 observations has been the consistent detection of water but no methane in Neptunian atmospheres, though recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations are potentially starting to overturn this “missing methane” paradigm. In this work, we present the transmission spectrum of the hot Neptune HD 219666 b from 1.1 to 1.6 μ m from two transit observations using HST/WFC3 G141. Our fiducial atmospheric retrieval detects water at ∼3 σ in HD 219666 b’s atmosphere and prefers no contribution from methane, similar to these previous observations of other planets. Motivated by recent detections of methane in Neptunian atmospheres by JWST, we explore additional models and find that a methane-only scenario could adequately fit the data, though it is not preferred and likely unphysical. We discuss the impact of this methane detection challenge on our understanding of planetary atmospheres based on HST/WFC3 observations alone, and where JWST observations offer a solution.