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A double planet system or planet binary undergoes eclipses that modify the reflective light curve. In the time domain, the eclipse events are fast and weak. This would make their signal difficult to find and recognize in the phase light…
The phase or orbital light curves of extrasolar terrestrial planets in reflected or emitted light will contain information about their atmospheres and surfaces complementary to data obtained by other techniques such as spectrosopy. We show…
Future telescopes will characterize rocky exoplanets in reflected light, revealing their albedo, which depends on surface, cloud, and atmospheric properties. Identifying these features is crucial for assessing habitability. We present…
Reflected light curves observed for exoplanets indicate bright clouds at some of them. We estimate how the light curve and total stellar heating of a planet depend on forward and backward scattering in the clouds based on Pioneer and…
We derive efficient, closed form, differentiable, and numerically stable solutions for the flux measured from a spherical planet or moon seen in reflected light, either in or out of occultation. Our expressions apply to the computation of…
The light scattered by an extrasolar Earth-like planet's surface and atmosphere will vary in intensity and color as the planet rotates; the resulting light curve will contain information about the planet's properties. Since most of the…
The disk-integrated reflected brightness of an exoplanet changes as a function of time due to orbital and rotational motion coupled with an inhomogeneous albedo map. We have previously derived analytic reflected lightcurves for spherical…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
The detection of massive planets orbiting nearby stars has become almost routine, but current techniques are as yet unable to detect terrestrial planets with masses comparable to the Earth's. Future space-based observatories to detect…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
We propose that astronomers will be eventually be able to discriminate between extrasolar Earth-like planets with surface oceans and those without using the shape of phase light curves in the visible and near-IR spectrum. We model the…
Rings around exoplanets (exorings) are one of the most expected discoveries in exoplanetary research. There is an increasing number of theoretical and observational efforts for detecting exorings, but none of them have succeeded yet. Most…
We present a semi-analytic model atmosphere for close-in exoplanets that captures the essential physics of phase curves: orbital and viewing geometry, advection, and re-radiation. We calibrate the model with the well-characterized…
We present results of numerical simulations of the flux (irradiance), F, and the degree of polarization (i.e. the ratio of polarized to total flux), P, of light that is reflected by Earth-like extrasolar planets orbiting solar-type stars,…
It is the most appropriate time to characterize the Earth-like exoplanets in order to detect biosignature beyond the Earth because such exoplanets will be the prime targets of big-budget missions like JWST, Roman Space Telescope, HabEx,…
Planned missions will spatially resolve temperate terrestrial planets from their host star. Although reflected light from such a planet encodes information about its surface, it has not been shown how to establish surface characteristics of…
[Abridged] Distant stars and planets will remain spatially unresolved for the foreseeable future. It is nonetheless possible to infer aspects of their brightness markings and viewing geometries by analyzing disk-integrated rotational and…
Planets can emit polarized thermal radiation, just like brown dwarfs. We present calculated thermal polarization signals from hot exoplanets, using an advanced radiative transfer code that fully includes all orders of scattering by gaseous…
Exoplanet transmission spectra, which measure the absorption of light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit, are most often assessed globally, resulting in a single spectrum per planetary atmosphere. However, the inherent…
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…