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Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol.509, no.1, pp.1447-1464, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
© 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.We present broad-band photometry of 30 planetary transits of the ultra-hot-Jupiter KELT-16 b, using five medium-class telescopes. The transits were monitored through standard $BVRI$ filters and four were siltaneously observed from different places, for a total of 36 new light curves. We used these new photometric data and those from the TESS space telescope to review the main physical properties of the KELT-16 planetary system. Our results agree with previous measurements but are more precise. We estimated the mid-transit× for each of these transits and combined them with others from the literature to obtain 69 epochs, with a time baseline extending over more than 4 yr, and searched for transit time variations. We found no evidence for a period change, suggesting a lower limit for orbital decay at 8 Myr, with a lower limit on the reduced tidal quality factor of $Q{prime}_{star}> (1.9 pm 0.8)× 105$ with $95$ confidence. We built up an observational, low-resolution transmission spectrum of the planet, finding evidence of the presence of optical absorbers, although with a low significance. Using TESS data, we reconstructed the phase curve finding that KELT-16 b has a phase offset of 25.25 ± 14.03 °E, a day- and night-side brightness temperature of 3190 ± 61 K and 2668 ± 56 K, respectively. Finally, we compared the flux ratio of the planet over its star at the TESS and Spitzer wavelengths with theoretical emission spectra, finding evidence of a temperature inversion in the planet's atmosphere, the chemical composition of which is preferably oxygen-rich rather than carbon-rich.