Related papers: The Impact of Transit Observations on Planetary Ph…
The characterization of the atmospheres of habitable-zone Earth-mass exoplanets that transit across main-sequence stars, let alone the detection of bio-markers in their atmospheres, will be challenging even with future facilities. It has…
Future surveys for transiting extrasolar planets, including the space-based mission Kepler (Borucki et al 2003), are expected to detect hundreds of Jovian mass planets and tens of terrestrial mass planets. For many of these newly discovered…
We review several aspects of the calculation of exoplanet model atmospheres in the current era, with a focus on understanding the temperature-pressure profiles of atmospheres and their emitted spectra. Most of the focus is on gas giant…
The determination of the abundance of volatiles in extrasolar planets is very important as it can provide constraints on transport in protoplanetary disks and on the formation location of planets. However, constraining the internal…
Atmospheric temperature and mixing ratio profiles of terrestrial planets vary with the spectral energy flux distribution for different types of M-dwarf stars and the planetary gravity. We investigate the resulting effects on the spectral…
H$_2$O is a key molecule in characterizing atmospheres of temperate terrestrial planets, and observations of transmission spectra are expected to play a primary role in detecting its signatures in the near future. The detectability of…
The field of exoplanets is quickly expanding from just the detection of new planets and the measurement of their most basic parameters, such as mass, radius and orbital configuration, to the first measurements of their atmospheric…
Observations of stellar surfaces - except for the Sun - are hampered by their tiny angular extent, while observed spectral lines are smeared by averaging over the stellar surface, and by stellar rotation. Exoplanet transits can be used to…
We present a comprehensive theory of the spectra and atmospheres of irradiated extrasolar giant planets. We explore the dependences on stellar type, orbital distance, cloud characteristics, planet mass, and surface gravity. Phase-averaged…
Transitional discs are a special type of protoplanetary discs where planet formation is thought to be taking place. These objects feature characteristic inner cavities and/or gaps of a few tens of AUs in the sub-millimitre images of the…
With the rapid developments in the exoplanet field, more and more terrestrial exoplanets are being detected. Characterising their atmospheres using transit observations will become a key datum in the quest for detecting an Earth-like…
The TRAPPIST-1 planets have become prime targets for studying the atmospheric and geophysical properties of planets around M-dwarf stars. To effectively identify their atmospheric composition, we first must understand their geological…
A terrestrial planet is molten during formation and may remain so if subject to intense insolation or tidal forces. Observations continue to favour the detection and characterisation of hot planets, potentially with large outgassed…
Atmospheric regions below a refractive boundary are hidden in limb observations. Refraction thus creates a gray continuum in the planet's transmission spectrum which can hide spectral features associated with sources of atmospheric opacity.…
We study the impact of multi-layered clouds (low-level water and high-level ice clouds) on the thermal emission spectra of Earth-like planets orbiting different types of stars. Clouds have an important influence on such planetary emission…
So far radial velocity (RV) measurements have discovered ~25 stars to host multiple planets. The statistics imply that many of the known hosts of transiting planets should have additional planets, yet none have been solidly detected. They…
We investigate the atmosphere and interior of the new transiting planet HD 149026b, which appears to be very rich in heavy elements. We first compute model atmospheres at metallicities ranging from solar to ten times solar, and show how for…
Ongoing observing projects like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and future missions offer the chance to characterize Earth-like exoplanetary atmospheres. Thereby, M-dwarfs are preferred targets for transit observations, for example,…
UV auroral emissions from giant planets are produced by extra-atmospheric energetic particles interacting with an atmosphere. They have been observed on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus and should be present on Neptune. Even if the mechanisms are…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…