Related papers: Analytic Scattering and Refraction Models for Exop…
Most of the exoplanets detected up to now transit in front of their host stars, allowing for the generation of transmission spectra; the study of exoplanet atmospheres relies heavily upon accurate analysis of these spectra. Recent…
High-resolution transmission spectroscopy is a powerful method for probing the extended atmospheres of short-period exoplanets. With the advancement of ultra-stable echelle spectrographs and the advent of 30-meter class telescopes on the…
The transmission spectra of exoplanet atmospheres observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the near-infrared range (1.1-1.65$\mu$m) frequently show evidence for some combination of clouds and hazes. Identification of systematic…
In recent years it has become common practice to divide observed transit absorption spectra by synthetic absorption spectra computed for the transit of an atmosphere-less planet. This action supposedly corrects the observed absorption…
CONTEXT: High-precision stellar analyses require hydrodynamic modeling to interpret chemical abundances or oscillation modes. Exoplanet atmosphere studies require stellar background spectra to be known along the transit path while detection…
Exoplanet transmission spectra provide rich information about the chemical composition, clouds and temperature structure of exoplanet atmospheres. Most exoplanet transmission spectra only span infrared wavelengths ($\gtrsim$ 1 $\rm{\mu…
The advent of high-resolution spectroscopy as a method for exoplanet atmospheric characterization has expanded our capability to study non-transiting planets, increasing the number of planets accessible for observation. Many of the most…
We show that a consistent fit to observed secondary eclipse data for several strongly irradiated transiting planets demands a temperature inversion (stratosphere) at altitude. Such a thermal inversion significantly influences the…
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is…
The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often useful to…
Ground-based astro-geodetic observations and atmospheric occultations, are two examples of observational techniques requiring a scrutiny analysis of atmospheric refraction. In both cases, the measured changes in observables are…
The atmospheres of planets (including Earth) and the outer layers of stars have often been treated in radiative transfer as plane-parallel media, instead of spherical shells, which can lead to inaccuracy, e.g. limb darkening. We give an…
We highlight a physical effect that is often not considered that impacts the calculation of model spectra of planets at secondary eclipse, affecting both emission and reflection spectra. The radius of the emitting surface of the planet is…
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…
All optical systems, which involve the collimation of a reflected, transmitted or scattered wave subsequent to tight focusing, are subject to two kinds of deviations. One is the wavefront curvature due to inaccurate focal placement of the…
The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…
Context. Transit events of extrasolar planets offer the opportunity to study the composition of their atmospheres. Previous work on transmission spectroscopy of the close-in gas giant TrES-3 b revealed an increase in absorption towards blue…
Optical phase curves of hot Jupiters can reveal global scattering properties. We implement a Bayesian inference framework for optical phase curves with flux contributions from: reflected light from a potentially inhomogeneous atmosphere,…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres via transit spectroscopy is based on the comparison between the stellar spectrum filtered through the atmosphere and the unadulterated spectrum from the occulted stellar region. The…
Clouds have an important role in the atmospheres of planetary bodies. It is expected that, like all the planetary bodies in our solar system, exoplanet atmospheres will also have substantial cloud coverage, and evidence is mounting for…