Related papers: Rayleigh scattering by H2 in the extrasolar planet…
Water, methane and carbon-monoxide are expected to be among the most abundant molecules besides molecular hydrogen in the hot atmosphere of close-in EGPs. Transit observations in the mid-IR allow the atmospheric content of transiting…
The rich wealth of observational data, and matching theoretical investigations, of the transiting planet of HD209458 stands in sharp contrast to systems for which only the radial velocity orbit is known. In this paper, I summarize the…
Aims. We aim to investigate the origin of the discrepant results reported in the literature about the presence of Na I in the atmosphere of HD209458 b, based on low- and high-resolution transmission spectroscopy. Methods. We generated…
Atmospheric escape has been detected from the exoplanet HD 209458b through transit observations of the hydrogen Lyman-alpha line. Here we present spectrally resolved Lyman-alpha transit observations of the exoplanet HD 189733b at two…
The thermal evolution of magma oceans formed by giant impacts is strongly influenced by a proto-atmosphere through its blanketing effect, which suppresses outgoing planetary radiation. While both radiative absorption and Rayleigh scattering…
Transmission spectroscopy characterizes the wavelength dependence of transit depth, revealing atmospheric absorption features in planetary terminator regions. In this context, different optical transmission spectra of HAT-P-12b reported in…
Detecting heavy atoms in the inflated atmospheres of giant exoplanets that orbit close to their parent stars is a key factor for understanding their bulk composition, and the processes that drive their expansion and interaction with the…
Transit observations in Ly-alpha of HD209458b and HD189733b revealed signatures of neutral hydrogen escaping the planets. We present a 3D particle model of the dynamics of the escaping atoms, and calculate theoretical Ly-alpha absorption…
We report the first direct detection of an exoplanet in the visible polarized light. The transiting planet HD189733b is one of the very hot Jupiters with shortest periods and, thus, smallest orbits, which makes them ideal candidates for…
We present new multi-broadband transit photometry of HD 189733b obtained at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory. Using an ensemble of five-band Sloan filter observations across multiple transits we have created an "ultra-low" resolution…
Broadband secondary-eclipse measurements of hot Jupiters have indicated the existence of atmospheric thermal inversions, but their presence is difficult to determine from broadband measurements because of degeneracies between molecular…
The signs of an expanding atmosphere of HD209458b have been observed with far-ultraviolet transmission spectroscopy and in the measurements of transit absorption by metastable HeI. These observations are interpreted using the hydrodynamic…
HD 209458b is the prototypical hot Jupiter and one of the best targets available for precise atmosphere characterisation. Now that spectra from both Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are available, we can…
We report first multicolor polarimetric measurements (UBV bands) for the hot Jupiters HD189733b and confirm our previously reported detection of polarization in the B band (Berdyugina et al. 2008). The wavelength dependence of polarization…
We present a synthesis of physical effects influencing the observed lightcurve of an extrasolar giant planet (EGP) transiting its host star. The synthesis includes a treatment of Rayleigh scattering, cloud scattering, refraction, and…
We investigate the intensity and polarization of reflected light from planetary atmospheres. We present a large grid of Monte Carlo simulations for planets with Rayleigh scattering atmospheres. We discuss the disk-integrated polarization…
Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets is a tool to characterize rocky planets and explore their habitability. Using the Earth itself as a proxy, we model the atmospheric cross section as a function of wavelength, and show the effect of…
Exoplanetary transmission spectroscopy in the near-infrared using Hubble/NICMOS is currently ambiguous because different observational groups claim different results from the same data, depending on their analysis methodologies. Spatial…
We search for an infrared signature of the transiting extrasolar planet HD 209458b during secondary eclipse. Our method, which we call `occultation spectroscopy,' searches for the disappearance and reappearance of weak spectral features due…
Orbital variation in reflected starlight from exoplanets could eventually be used to detect surface oceans. Exoplanets with rough surfaces, or dominated by atmospheric Rayleigh scattering, should reach peak brightness in full phase, orbital…