Related papers: Analytic Scattering and Refraction Models for Exop…
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…
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…
The transit method, during which a planet's presence is inferred by measuring the reduction in flux as it passes in front of its parent star, is a highly successful exoplanet detection and characterization technique. During transit, the…
Transmission spectroscopy enables the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres by probing absorption features in their terminator regions. In the optical, it is particularly sensitive to metal oxides and atomic species that can strongly…
Transmission spectra are differential measurements that utilize stellar illumination to probe transiting exoplanet atmospheres. Any spectral difference between the illuminating light source and the disk-integrated stellar spectrum due to…
The evolution of stars and planets is mostly controlled by the properties of their atmosphere. This is particularly true in the case of exoplanets close to their stars, for which one has to account both for an (often intense) irradiation…
Observed exoplanet transit spectra are usually retrieved using 1D models to determine atmospheric composition while planetary atmospheres are 3D. With the JWST and future space telescopes such as Ariel, we will be able to obtain…
Studying the atmospheres of exoplanets is one of the most promising ways to learn about distant worlds beyond our solar system. The composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere can provide critical insights into its geology and potential…
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…
Transmission spectroscopy during planetary transits, which is based on the measurements of the variations of planet-to-star radius ratio as a function of wavelength, is a powerful technique to study the atmospheric properties of transiting…
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 develop a new method for analytical inversion of binned exoplanet transit spectra and for retrieval of planet parameters. The method has a geometrical interpretation and treats each observed spectrum as a single vector $\vec r$ in the…
Ground based observers have on 5/6th June 2012 the last opportunity of the century to watch the passage of Venus across the solar disk from Earth. Venus transits have traditionally provided unique insight into the Venus atmosphere through…
Remote sensing of the atmospheres of distant worlds motivates a firm understanding of radiative transfer. In this review, we provide a pedagogical cookbook that describes the principal ingredients needed to perform a radiative transfer…
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…
With the increasing number of directly imaged giant exoplanets the current atmosphere models are often not capable of fully explaining the spectra and luminosity of the sources. A particularly challenging component of the atmosphere models…
Two independent investigations of the atmosphere of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-12b by two different groups resulted in discrepant solutions. Using broad-band photometry from the ground, one study found a flat and featureless transmission…
Spectroscopic observations of a transit event of an extrasolar planet offer the opportunity to study the composition of the planetary atmosphere. We observed a transit of the inflated Hot Jupiter HAT-P-32b with MODS at the LBT to…
Transit spectroscopy is a key tool for exoplanet atmospheric characterization. However, transit spectrum observations can be limited by aerosol extinction when gas opacities are weak. The ultraviolet wavelength range contains a variety of…
We propose a new data analysis method for obtaining transmission spectra of exoplanet atmospheres and brightness variation across the stellar disk from transit observations. The new method is capable of recovering exoplanet atmosphere…