Related papers: H\alpha\ Absorption in Transiting Exoplanet Atmosp…
The nearby star GJ 1214 hosts a planet intermediate in radius and mass between Earth and Neptune, resulting in some uncertainty as to its nature. We have observed this planet, GJ 1214b, during transit with the high-resolution, near-infrared…
Ground-based telescopes equipped with state-of-the-art spectrographs are able to obtain high-resolution transmission and emission spectra of exoplanets that probe the structure and composition of their atmospheres. Various atomic and…
We use a model of aerosol microphysics to investigate the impact of high-altitude photochemical aerosols on the transmission spectra and atmospheric properties of close-in exoplanets, such as HD209458b and HD189733b. The results depend…
The evolutionary state of blue supergiants is still unknown. Stellar wind mass loss is one of the dominant processes determining the evolution of massive stars, and it may provide clues on the evolutionary properties of blue supergiants. As…
Transit observations of HD 209458b in the stellar Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) line revealed strong absorption in both blue and red wings of the line interpreted as hydrogen atoms escaping from the planet's exosphere at high velocities. The…
We report a 4.8 sigma detection of water absorption features in the day side spectrum of the hot Jupiter HD 189733 b. We used high-resolution (R~100,000) spectra taken at 3.2 microns with CRIRES on the VLT to trace the radial-velocity shift…
Although atmospheric transmission spectroscopy of HD209458b with the Hubble Space Telescope has been very successful, attempts to detect its atmospheric absorption features using ground-based telescopes have so far been fruitless. Here we…
Rovibronic molecular hydrogen (H$_2$) transitions at redshift $z_{\rm abs} \simeq 2.659$ towards the background quasar B0642$-$5038 are examined for a possible cosmological variation in the proton-to-electron mass ratio, $\mu$. We utilise…
We obtained 238 spectra of the close orbiting extrasolar giant planet HD 189733b with resolution R ~ 15,000 during one night of observations with the near infrared spectrograph, NIRSPEC, at the Keck II Telescope. We have searched for…
During primary transits, the spectral signatures of an exoplanet atmosphere can be measured using transmission spectroscopy. The goal of this work is to accurately measure the atomspheric sodium absorption light curve in HD189733b,…
We present a theoretical model fit to the HST/STIS optical transit transmission spectrum of HD209458b. In our fit, we use the sodium absorption line profile along with the Rayleigh scattering by H_2 to help determine the average…
We report results from a FUSE survey of interstellar molecular hydrogen (H2) in the Galactic disk toward 139 O-type and early B-type stars at Galactic latitudes $|b| < 10^{\circ}$, with updated photometric and parallax distances. The H2…
The benchmark hot Jupiter HD 189733b has been a key target to lay out the foundations of comparative planetology for giant exoplanets. As such, HD 189733b has been extensively studied across the electromagnetic spectrum. Here, we report the…
In this work, we investigate the potassium excess absorption around 7699A of the exoplanets HD189733b and HD209458b. For this purpose, we used high spectral resolution transit observations acquired with the 2 x 8.4m Large Binocular…
We present a detailed analysis of a H2-bearing metal-rich sub-damped Lyman-alpha system at zabs = 0.10115 towards the radio-loud quasar J0441-4313, at a projected separation of ~7.6 kpc from a star-forming galaxy. The H2, C I and Na I…
Transmission spectroscopy to date has detected atomic and molecular absorption in Jupiter-sized exoplanets, but intense efforts to measure molecular absorption in the atmospheres of smaller (Neptune-sized) planets during transits have…
Observations of astronomical objects in the far ultraviolet (FUV wavelengths span 900-1800{\AA}) from earth's orbit has been impeded due to bright Lyman-{\alpha} geocoronal emission. The Johns Hopkins Rocket Group is developing a hydrogen…
We use newly developed 3D kinetic MHD models of the heliosphere to predict heliospheric H I Lyman-alpha absorption for various lines of sight. These predictions are compared with actual Lyman-alpha spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope,…
Changes in levels of stellar activity can mimic absorption signatures in transmission spectra from circumplanetary material. The frequency and magnitude of these changes is thus important to understand in order to attribute any particular…
Strong absorption signatures in the helium line at 1083 nm have recently been detected in transmission spectra of several close-in exoplanets. This absorption line originates from neutral helium atoms in an excited, metastable 2$^3$S state.…