Abstract
ApJS 260 3 (2022) Population studies of exoplanets are key to unlocking their statistical
properties. So far the inferred properties have been mostly limited to
planetary, orbital and stellar parameters extracted from, e.g., Kepler, radial
velocity, and GAIA data. More recently an increasing number of exoplanet
atmospheres have been observed in detail from space and the ground. Generally,
however, these atmospheric studies have focused on individual planets, with the
exception of a couple of works which have detected the presence of water vapor
and clouds in populations of gaseous planets via transmission spectroscopy.
Here, using a suite of retrieval tools, we analyse spectroscopic and
photometric data of 25 hot Jupiters, obtained with the Hubble and Spitzer Space
Telescopes via the eclipse technique. By applying the tools uniformly across
the entire set of 25 planets, we extract robust trends in the thermal structure
and chemical properties of hot Jupiters not obtained in past studies. With the
recent launch of JWST and the upcoming missions Twinkle, and Ariel, population
based studies of exoplanet atmospheres, such as the one presented here, will be
a key approach to understanding planet characteristics, formation, and
evolution in our galaxy.