Related papers: Clouds and Hazes in Exoplanet Atmospheres
Studying exoplanet atmospheres is essential for assessing their potential to host liquid water and their capacity to support life (their habitability). Each atmosphere uniquely influences the likelihood of surface liquid water, defining the…
Identification of habitable planets beyond our solar system is a key goal of current and future space missions. Yet habitability depends not only on the stellar irradiance, but equally on constituent parts of the planetary atmosphere. Here…
The interstellar cloud surrounding the solar system regulates the galactic environment of the Sun, and determines the boundary conditions of the heliosphere. Both the Sun and interstellar clouds move through space, so these boundary…
Photochemical hazes have been frequently used to interpret exoplanet transmission spectra that show an upward slope towards shorter wavelengths and weak molecular features. While previous studies have only considered spherical haze…
Exoplanetary science is on the verge of an unprecedented revolution. The thousands of exoplanets discovered over the past decade have most recently been supplemented by discoveries of potentially habitable planets around nearby low-mass…
Observational studies of exoplanets are suggestive of a ubiquitous presence of clouds. The current modelling techniques used in emission to account for the clouds tend to require prior knowledge of the cloud condensing species and often do…
Space weather is among the most powerful and least understood forces shaping planetary atmospheres. In our Solar System, we observe its effects directly: atmospheric escape, chemical disruption, and spectacular auroral displays. Yet for…
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is…
The precipitation of cloud particles in brown dwarf and exoplanet atmospheres establishes an ongoing downward flux of condensable elements. To understand the efficiency of cloud formation, it is therefore crucial to quantify the…
Polarized scattering in planetary atmospheres is computed in the context of exoplanets. The problem of polarized radiative transfer is solved for a general case of absorption and scattering, while Rayleigh and Mie polarized scattering are…
Compared to the diversity seen in exoplanets, Venus is a veritable astrophysical twin of the Earth, however its global cloud layer truncates features in transmission spectroscopy, masking its non-Earth-like nature. Observational indicators…
Advancements in our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres, from massive gas giants down to rocky worlds, depend on the constructive challenges between observations and models. We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in…
Direct-imaging spectra hold rich information about a planet's atmosphere and surface, and several space-based missions aiming at such observations will become a reality in the near future. Previous spectral retrieval works have resulted in…
Cloud formation and magnetic effects are both expected to significantly impact the structures and observable properties of hot Jupiter atmospheres. For some hot Jupiters, thermal ionization and condensation can coexist in a single…
With dayside temperatures hot enough to sustain a magma ocean and a silicate atmosphere, lava planets are the best targets to study the atmosphere of a rocky world. In the absence of nightside heating, the entire atmosphere collapses near…
Despite surface liquid water's importance to habitability, observationally diagnosing its presence or absence on exoplanets is still an open problem. Inspired within the Solar System by the differing sulfur cycles on Venus and Earth, we…
Brown Dwarf atmosphere are a chemically extremely rich, one example being the formation of clouds driven by the phase-non-equilibrium of the atmospheric gas. Cloud formation modelling is an integral part of any atmosphere simulation used to…
The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…
Brown dwarfs bridge the gap between the stellar and planetary mass regimes. Evolving from conditions very similar to the lowest-mass stars, the atmospheres of older brown dwarfs closely resemble those expected in close-in extrasolar giant…
Exoplanet transit spectroscopy enables the characterization of distant worlds, and will yield key results for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. However, transit spectra models are often simplified, omitting potentially important processes…