Ground-based detection of thermal emission from the exoplanet WASP-19b?

We present an occultation of the newly discovered hot Jupiter system WASP-19, ob-served with the HAWK-I instrument on the VLT, in order to measure thermal emission from the planet’s dayside at ∼2µm. The light curve was analysed using a Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo method to find the eclipse depth and the central transit time. The transit depth was found to be 0.366±0.072%, corresponding to a brightness tem-perature of 2540±180 K. This is significantly higher than the calculated (zero-albedo) equilibrium temperature, and indicates that the planet shows poor redistribution of heat to the night side, consistent with models of highly irradiated planets. Further ob-servations are needed to confirm the existence of a temperature inversion, and possibly molecular emission lines. The central eclipse time was found to be consistent with a circular orbit