Related papers: Atmospheric composition and structure of HD209458b
We investigate the effect of planetary rotation on the transit spectrum of an extrasolar giant planet. During ingress and egress, absorption features arising from the planet's atmosphere are Doppler shifted by of order the planet's…
We present a brief summary of observations of the transiting extrasolar planet, HD 209458 b, designed to detect the secondary eclipse. We employ the method of `occultation spectroscopy', which searches in combined light (star and planet)…
The hot sub-Saturn-mass exoplanet HAT-P-12b is an ideal target for transmission spectroscopy because of its inflated radius. We observed one transit of the planet with the multi-object double spectrograph (MODS) on the Large Binocular…
Using the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on the {\it Hubble Space Telescope (HST)}, we obtained moderate-resolution, high signal/noise ultraviolet spectra of HD 209458 and its exoplanet HD 209458b during transit, both orbital…
Of the over 200 known extrasolar planets, 14 exhibit transits in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth. Spectroscopic observations of the transiting planets can probe the physical conditions of their atmospheres. One such technique…
Transmission spectroscopy of transiting exoplanets is a proven technique that can yield information on the composition and structure of a planet's atmosphere. However, transmission spectra may be compromised by inhomogeneities in the…
We report the transit observations of the ultra hot Jupiter WASP-121b using the Goodman High Throughput Spectrograph (GHTS) at the 4-meter ground-based telescope Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR), covering the wavelength…
The super-Earth LHS 1140 b is an interesting target for atmospheric observations since it is close to the habitable zone of its star and falls in the gap of the radius distribution of small exoplanets, in the region thought to correspond to…
We present new calculations of transit spectra of super-Earths that allow for atmospheres with arbitrary proportions of common molecular species and haze. We test this method with generic spectra, reproducing the expected systematics and…
The technique of transmission spectroscopy allows us to constrain the chemical composition of the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. It relies on very high signal-to-noise spectroscopic (or spectrophotometric) observations and is thus…
The detection of increased sodium absorption during primary transit implies the presence of an atmosphere around an extrasolar planet, and enables us to infer the structure of this atmosphere. Sodium has only been detected in the…
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…
Limb-resolved transmission spectroscopy has the potential to transform our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres. By separately measuring the transmission spectra of the evening and morning limbs, these atmospheric regions can be…
The absorption signals of metastable He in HD 209458b and several other exoplanets can be explained via escaping atmosphere model with a subsolar He/H ratio. The low abundance of helium can be a result of planet formation if there is a…
We have revisited the search for carbon monoxide absorption features in transmission during the transit of the extrasolar planet HD 209458b. We acquired 1077 high resolution spectra at 2 microns using NIRSPEC on Keck II during three…
High-resolution Doppler spectroscopy provides an avenue to study the atmosphere of both transiting and non-transiting planets. This powerful method has also yielded some of the most robust atmospheric detections to date. Currently,…
We have observed 4 transits of the planet of HD 209458 using the STIS spectrograph on HST. Summing the recorded counts over wavelength between 582 nm and 638 nm yields a photometric time series with 80 s time sampling and relative precision…
Absorption of stellar H\alpha\ by the upper atmosphere of the planet HD189733b has recently been detected by Jensen et al. Motivated by this observation, we have developed a model for atomic hydrogen in the n=2 state and compared the…
We perform modeling investigations to aid in understanding the atmospheres and composition of small planets of ~2-4 Earth radii, which are now known to be common in our galaxy. GJ 1214b is a well studied example whose atmospheric…
Context: Several studies have so far placed useful constraints on planetary atmospheric properties using transmission spectrsocopy, and in the case of HD209458b even the radial velocity of the planet during the transit event has been…