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The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
Since the first discovery of an extra-solar planet around a main-sequence star, in 1995, the number of detected exoplanets has increased enormously. Over the past two decades, observational instruments (both onboard and on ground-based…
Program SHELLSPEC is designed to calculate light-curves, spectra and images of interacting binaries and extrasolar planets immersed in a moving circumstellar environment which is optically thin. It solves simple radiative transfer along the…
Stellar contamination has long been recognized as a major bottleneck in transmission spectroscopy, limiting our ability to accurately characterize exoplanet atmospheres-particularly for terrestrial worlds. In response, significant…
With the ever-growing number of exoplanets detected, the issue of characterization is becoming more and more relevant. Direct imaging is certainly the most efficient but the most challenging tool to probe the atmosphere of exoplanets and…
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…
The search for exoplanets is an active field in astronomy, with direct imaging as one of the most challenging methods due to faint exoplanet signals buried within stronger residual starlight. Successful detection requires advanced image…
New observational facilities are becoming increasingly capable of observing reflected light from transiting and directly imaged extrasolar planets. In this study, we provide an analytic framework to interpret observed phase curves,…
There is widespread interest in estimating the fluorescence properties of natural materials in an image. However, the separation between reflected and fluoresced components is difficult, because it is impossible to distinguish reflected and…
We present an analytical model for the transmission spectrum of a transiting exoplanet, showing that a cloud base can produce an observable inflection point in the spectrum. The wavelength and magnitude of the inflection can be used to…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the search for and characterization of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres in the habitable zone via transmission spectroscopy. However, relatively little work has been done to use solar…
The classical picture of our Solar System being the archetypal outcome of planet formation has been rendered obsolete by the astonishing diversity of extrasolar-system architectures. From rare hot-Jupiters to abundant super-Earths and…
Point source spectrophotometric ("single-point") light curves of Earth-like planets contain a surprising amount of information about the spatial features of those worlds. Spatially resolving these light curves is important for assessing…
The fine precision of photometric data available from missions like Kepler provide researchers with the ability to measure changes in light on the order of tens of parts per million (ppm). This level of precision allows researchers to…
Atmospheric regions below a refractive boundary are hidden in limb observations. Refraction thus creates a gray continuum in the planet's transmission spectrum which can hide spectral features associated with sources of atmospheric opacity.…
New observational facilities are beginning to enable insights into the three-dimensional (3D) nature of exoplanets. Transmission spectroscopy is the most widely used method for characterizing transiting temperate exoplanet's atmospheres,…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
Future space-based telescopes, such as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), will observe the reflected-light spectra of directly imaged extrasolar planets. Interpretation of such data presents a number of novel challenges,…
The spectrum of an exoplanet reveals the physical, chemical, and biological processes that have shaped its history and govern its future. However, observations of exoplanet spectra are complicated by the overwhelming glare of their host…
We propose a method to distinguish between cloudy, hazy and clearsky (free of clouds and hazes) exoplanet atmospheres that could be applicable to upcoming large aperture space and ground-based telescopes such as the James Webb Space…