Related papers: Earthshine observations of an inhabited planet
Earthshine is the dominant source of natural illumination on the surface of the Moon during lunar night, and at locations within permanently shadowed regions that never receive direct sunlight. As such, earthshine may enable the exploration…
Observations of the Earth as a planet using the earthshine technique (i.e. looking at the light reflected from the darkside of the Moon), have been used for climate and astrobiology studies. They provide information about the planetary…
Earthshine observations offer a unique opportunity to study Earth as an exoplanet seen from the Moon. As the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry changes, Earth can be observed as a spatially unresolved exoplanet at different phase angles, providing…
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…
Ground-based observations of the Earthshine, i.e., the light scattered by Earth to the Moon, and then reflected back to Earth, simulate space observations of our planet and represent a powerful benchmark for the studies of Earth-like…
We report the visible reflection spectrum of the integrated Earth, illuminated as it would be seen as an spatially-unresolved extrasolar planet. The spectrum was derived from observation of lunar earthshine in the range 4800 to 9200…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
We report spectroscopic observations of the earthshine reflected from the Moon. By applying our photometry methodology to spectroscopy, we were able to precisely determine the Earth's reflectance, and its variation as a function of…
The identification of an extrasolar planet as Earth-like will depend on the detection of atmospheric signatures or surface non-uniformities. In this paper we present spatially unresolved flux light curves of Earth for the purpose of…
Ambitious studies of Earth-like extrasolar planets are outlined in the context of an exploration initiative for a return to the Earth's Moon. Two mechanism for linearly polarizing light reflected from Earth-like planets are discussed: 1)…
The phase or orbital light curves of extrasolar terrestrial planets in reflected or emitted light will contain information about their atmospheres and surfaces complementary to data obtained by other techniques such as spectrosopy. We show…
Specularly reflected light, or glint, from an ocean surface may provide a useful observational tool for studying extrasolar terrestrial planets. Detection of sea-surface glints would differentiate ocean-bearing terrestrial planets, i.e.…
It is shown how repeated observations of the sunset from various points up a tall building can be used to determine the Earth's radius. The same observations can also be used, at some latitudes, to deduce an approximate value for the amount…
Ground-based optical astronomy necessarily involves sensing the light of astronomical objects along with the contributions of many natural sources ranging from the Earth's atmosphere to cosmological light. In addition, astronomers have long…
It has been posited that lunar eclipse observations may help predict the in-transit signature of Earth-like extrasolar planets. However, a comparative analysis of the two phenomena addressing in detail the transport of stellar light through…
We present the results of the optical spectropolarimetry of Earthshine on the Moon for Earth phase angles ranging from 49 to 96 degrees. The observations were conducted on 2011 March 9-13 (UT) using the spectropolarimeter HBS installed on…
The detection of exolife is one of the goals of very ambitious future space missions that aim to take direct images of Earth-like planets. While associations of simple molecules present in the planet's atmosphere ($O_2$, $O_3$, $CO_2$ etc.)…
We present a brief overview of Moonshine with an emphasis on connections to physics. Moonshine collectively refers to a set of phenomena connecting group theory, analytic number theory, and vertex operator algebras or conformal field…
Of the 342 planets discovered so far orbiting other stars, 58 "transit" the stellar disk, meaning that they can be detected by a periodic decrease in the starlight flux. The light from the star passes through the atmosphere of the planet,…
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…