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Directly-imaged exoplanets are unexplored laboratories for the application of the spectral and temperature retrieval method, where the chemistry and composition of their atmospheres are inferred from inverse modeling of the available data.…
Determining wavelength-dependent exoplanet radii measurements is an excellent way to probe the composition of exoplanet atmospheres. In light of this, Borsa et al. (2016) sought to develop a technique to obtain such measurements by…
All water-covered rocky planets in the inner habitable zones of solar-type stars will inevitably experience a catastrophic runaway climate due to increasing stellar luminosity and limits to outgoing infrared radiation from wet greenhouse…
Relatively little is understood about the atmospheric composition of temperate to warm exoplanets (equilibrium temperature $T_{\rm eq}<$ 1000 K), as many of them are found to have uncharacteristically flat transmission spectra. Their…
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…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to revolutionize the field of exoplanets. The broad wavelength coverage and the high sensitivity of its instruments will allow characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres with unprecedented…
Planets larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are some of the most numerous in the galaxy, but observational efforts to understand this population have proved challenging because optically thick clouds or hazes at high altitudes…
Transmission spectroscopy provides a powerful probe of the atmospheric properties of transiting exoplanets. To date, studies of exoplanets in transit have focused on inferring their atmospheric properties such as chemical compositions,…
Space telescopes such as EChO (Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory) and JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) will be important for the future study of extrasolar planet atmospheres. Both of these missions are capable of performing high…
Several concepts now exist for small, space-based missions to directly characterize exoplanets in reflected light. Here, we develop an instrument noise model suitable for studying the spectral characterization potential of a…
Observations to characterize planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune have led to largely inconclusive interpretations at low spectral resolution due to hazes or clouds that obscure molecular features in their spectra. However,…
Following the discovery of the first exoplanet candidate transiting a white dwarf (WD), a "white dwarf opportunity" for characterizing the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets around WDs is emerging. Large planet-to-star size ratios and…
Direct imaging of exoplanets presents a formidable technical challenge owing to the small angular separation and high contrast between exoplanets and their host stars. High Dispersion Coronagraphy (HDC) is a pathway to achieve unprecedented…
We have entered the era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We use the first JWST transmission spectrum of the hot Saturn-mass exoplanet, WASP-39 b, obtained with the NIRSpec instrument in the 3-5 $\mu$m range to investigate (a) what…
Exoplanets on eccentric orbits experience an incident stellar flux that can be markedly larger at periastron versus apoastron. This variation in instellation can lead to dramatic changes in atmospheric structure in regions of the atmosphere…
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…
We demonstrate that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can detect infrared (IR) excess from the blended light spectral energy distribution of spatially unresolved terrestrial exoplanets orbiting nearby white dwarfs. We find that JWST is…
We are on the verge of characterizing the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zones of M dwarf stars. Due to their large planet-to-star radius ratios and higher frequency of transits, terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M…
The nearby TRAPPIST-1 planetary system is an exciting target for characterizing the atmospheres of terrestrial planets. The planets e, f and g lie in the circumstellar habitable zone and could sustain liquid water on their surfaces. During…
Eclipsing planetary systems give us an important window on extrasolar planet atmospheres. By measuring the depth of the secondary eclipse, when the planet moves behind the star, we can estimate the strength of the thermal emission from the…