Related papers: Exoplanet atmospheres with EChO: spectral retrieva…
The bolometric radiation from a central body is potentially a powerful driver of atmospheric escape from planets or satellites. When heated above their equilibrium temperatures those satellites, due to their low surface gravity, are be…
Determining whether temperate rocky exoplanets orbiting M stars retain atmospheres is currently a central goal of exoplanet astronomy. To this end, the James Webb Space Telescope has begun searching for atmospheres on these worlds with MIRI…
Two of TESS's major science goals are to measure masses for 50 planets smaller than 4 Earth radii and to discover high-quality targets for atmospheric characterization efforts. It is important that these two goals are linked by quantifying…
Transmission spectroscopy is a powerful technique widely used to probe exoplanet terminators. Atmospheric retrievals of transmission spectra are enabling comparative studies of exoplanet atmospheres. However, the atmospheric properties…
[Abridged] A key hypothesis in the field of exoplanet atmospheres is the trend of atmospheric thermal structure with planetary equilibrium temperature. We explore this trend and report here the first statistical detection of a transition in…
Many parameters constraining the spectral appearance of exoplanets are still poorly understood. We therefore study the properties of irradiated exoplanet atmospheres over a wide parameter range including metallicity, C/O ratio and host…
Thousands of transiting exoplanets have already been detected orbiting a wide range of host stars, including the first planets that could potentially be similar to Earth. The upcoming Extremely Large Telescopes and the James Webb Space…
The era of exoplanet characterization is upon us. For a subset of exoplanets -- the transiting planets -- physical properties can be measured, including mass, radius, and atmosphere characteristics. Indeed, measuring the atmospheres of a…
Characterizing exoplanetary atmospheres via Bayesian retrievals requires assuming some chemistry model, such as thermochemical equilibrium or parameterized abundances. The higher-resolution data offered by upcoming telescopes enables more…
To increase the sample size of future atmospheric characterization efforts, we build on the planetary infrared excess (PIE) technique that has been proposed as a means to detect and characterize the thermal spectra of transiting and…
In this white paper, we assess the potential for JWST to characterize the atmospheres of super-Earth exoplanets, by simulating a range of transiting spectra with different masses and temperatures. Our results are based on a JWST simulator…
Population studies of exoplanets are key to unlocking their statistical properties. So far the inferred properties have been mostly limited to planetary, orbital and stellar parameters extracted from, e.g., Kepler, radial velocity, and GAIA…
This dissertation as a whole aims to provide means to better understand hot-Jupiter planets through observing, performing thermochemical calculations, and modeling their atmospheres. We used Spitzer multi-wavelength secondary-eclipse…
While high-resolution cross-correlation spectroscopy (HRCCS) techniques have proven effective at characterizing the atmospheres of transiting and non-transiting hot Jupiters, the limitations of these techniques are not well understood. We…
The EChO core science will be based on a three tier survey, each with increasing sensitivity, in order to study the population of exo-planets from super-Earths to Jupiter-like planets, in the very hot to temperate zones (temperatures of 300…
The Exoplanet Transmission Spectroscopy Imager (ETSI) amalgamates a low resolution slitless prism spectrometer with custom multi-band filters to simultaneously image 15 spectral bandpasses between 430 nm and 975 nm with an average spectral…
High resolution spectroscopy has opened the way for new, detailed study of exoplanet atmospheres. There is evidence that this technique can be sensitive to the complex, three-dimensional (3D) atmospheric structure of these planets. In this…
The nearby extrasolar planet GJ 436b--which has been labelled as a 'hot Neptune'--reveals itself by the dimming of light as it crosses in front of and behind its parent star as seen from Earth. Respectively known as the primary transit and…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is predicted to make great advances in the field of exoplanet atmospheres. Its 25 m2 mirror means that it can reach unprecedented levels of precision in observations of transit spectra, and can thus…
Most planets currently amenable to transit spectroscopy are close enough to their host star to exhibit a relatively strong day to night temperature gradient. For hot planets, this leads to cause a chemical composition dichotomy between the…