Related papers: Photometric Variability in Earthshine Observations
Identifying liquid water on the surface of planets is a high priority, as this traditionally defines habitability. One proposed signature of oceans is specular reflection ("glint"), which increases the apparent albedo of a planet at…
The climate of a terrestrial exoplanet is controlled by the type of host star, the orbital configuration and the characteristics of the atmosphere and the surface. Many rocky exoplanets have higher eccentricities than those in the Solar…
Orbital phase-dependent variations in thermal emission and reflected stellar energy spectra can provide meaningful constraints on the climate states of terrestrial extrasolar planets orbiting M dwarf stars. Spatial distributions of water…
Seeing oceans, continents, quasi-static weather, and other surface features on exoplanets may allow us to detect and characterize life outside the solar system. The Proxima b planet resides within the stellar habitable zone allowing for…
Most models used to predict or fit exoplanet transmission spectra do not include all the effects of atmospheric refraction. Namely, the angular size of the star with respect to the planet can limit the lowest altitude, or highest density…
Model simulations of solar irradiance reaching the Earth's surface during a solar eclipse constitute a useful tool for studying the impact of this phenomenon on the radiance propagation through the atmosphere. A simple approach to extend…
Although transit spectroscopy is a powerful method for studying the composition, thermal properties and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres, only a few transiting terrestrial exoplanets will be close enough to allow significant transit…
The Sun and stars with low magnetic activity levels, become photometrically brighter when their activity increases. Magnetically more active stars display the opposite behaviour and get fainter when their activity increases. We reproduce…
Observations of the hot rocky exoplanet 55 Cancri e report significant but unexplained variability in brightness across visible and infrared bands, e.g., on sub-weekly timescales, its mid-infrared brightness temperature fluctuates by…
We investigate spectra of airless rocky exoplanets with a theoretical framework that self-consistently treats reflection and thermal emission. We find that a silicate surface on an exoplanet is spectroscopically detectable via prominent…
The physical bases of the detection and characterisation of extrasolar planets in the reflected light and thermal emission regimes are reviewed. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, including artefacts, in the determination of…
The weak orbital-phase dependent reflection signal of an exoplanet contains information on the planet surface, such as the distribution of continents and oceans on terrestrial planets. This light curve is usually studied in the time domain,…
An extrasolar planet can be detected via microlensing from the perturbation it makes in the smooth lensing light curve of the primary. In addition to the conventional photometric microlensing, astrometric observation of the center-of-light…
The detectability of moons of extra-solar planets is investigated, focussing on the time-of-arrival perturbation technique, a method for detecting moons of pulsar planets, and the photometric transit timing technique, a method for detecting…
Rings around giant exoplanets (hereafter 'exorings') are still a missing planetary phenomenon among the vast number of discovered planets. Despite the fact there exist a large number of methods for identifying and characterizing these…
The ongoing searches for exoplanetary systems have revealed a wealth of planets with diverse physical properties. Planets even smaller than the Earth have already been detected, and the efforts of future missions are placed on the…
Robust atmospheric and radiative transfer modeling will be required to properly interpret reflected light and thermal emission spectra of terrestrial exoplanets. This will help break observational degeneracies between the numerous…
The Great Oxidation Event was a period during which Earth's atmospheric oxygen (O$_2$) concentrations increased from $\sim 10^{-5}$ times its present atmospheric level (PAL) to near modern levels, marking the start of the Proterozoic…
Aims. 'Earthshine' is the dim light seen on the otherwise dark side of the Moon, particularly when it is close to new. 'Earthlight', or reflected sunlight from the Earth, is the source of Earthshine. Using B and V band CCD images of both…
We point out some advantages of making observations of extrasolar planets in linearly polarized (LP) light. Older cool stars have quite low levels (~ 10^-4 to 10^-5) of fractional LP, while extrasolar planets can have relatively high…