Related papers: Model-independent exoplanet transit spectroscopy
Determination of an exoplanet's mass is a key to understanding its basic properties, including its potential for supporting life. To date, mass constraints for exoplanets are predominantly based on radial velocity (RV) measurements, which…
Transmission spectroscopy can be used to constrain the properties of exoplanetary atmospheres. During a transit, the light blocked from the atmosphere of the planet leaves an imprint in the light coming from the star. This has been shown…
Context: Transmission spectroscopy has proven to be a useful tool for the study of exoplanet atmospheres, and has lead to the detection of a small number of elements and molecules (Na, K, H$_2$O), but also revealed that many planets show…
Transmission spectroscopy provides a window to study exoplanetary atmospheres, but that window is fogged by clouds and hazes. Clouds and haze introduce a degeneracy between the strength of gaseous absorption features and planetary physical…
The atmospheric composition of transiting exoplanets can be characterized during transit by spectroscopy. For the transit of an Earth twin, models predict that biogenic $O_2$ and $O_3$ should be detectable, as well as water vapour, a…
High-resolution transmission spectroscopy is a method for understanding the chemical and physical properties of upper exoplanetary atmospheres. Due to large absorption cross-sections, resonance lines of atomic sodium D-lines (at 5889.95…
Transiting planets provide unique opportunities for the atmospheric characterization of exoplanets as they can reveal composition and the temperature structures at the day-night terminator regions in planetary atmospheres, and help…
With over 1800 planets discovered outside of the Solar System in the past two decades, the field of exoplanetology has broadened our perspective on planetary systems. Research priorities are now moving from planet detection to planet…
We present Exo-Transmit, a software package to calculate exoplanet transmission spectra for planets of varied composition. The code is designed to generate spectra of planets with a wide range of atmospheric composition, temperature,…
Exoplanetary science is among the fastest evolving fields of today's astronomical research. Ground-based planet-hunting surveys alongside dedicated space missions (Kepler, CoRoT) are delivering an ever-increasing number of exoplanets, now…
The transit method, employed by MOST, \emph{Kepler}, and various ground-based surveys has enabled the characterization of extrasolar planets to unprecedented precision. These results are precise enough to begin to measure planet atmosphere…
We are entering the era of high-precision and high-resolution spectroscopy of exoplanets. Such observations herald the need for robust self-consistent spectral models of exoplanetary atmospheres to investigate intricate atmospheric…
Although transit spectroscopy is a powerful method for studying the composition, thermal properties and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres, only a few transiting terrestrial exoplanets will be close enough to allow significant transit…
Atmospheric retrievals of exoplanet transmission spectra allow constraints on the composition and structure of the day-night terminator region. Such retrievals in the past have typically assumed one-dimensional temperature structures which…
We report observations of two consecutive transits of the warm super-Earth exoplanet GJ1214b at 3.6 and 4.5 microns with the Infrared Array Camera instrument on-board the Spitzer Space Telescope. The two transit light curves allow for the…
Over the last decade, exoplanetary transmission spectra have yielded an unprecedented understanding about the physical and chemical nature of planets outside our solar system. Physical and chemical knowledge is mainly extracted via fitting…
Accurate estimations of atmospheric properties of exoplanets from transmission spectra require understanding of degeneracies between model parameters and observations that can resolve them. We conduct a systematic investigation of such…
Atmospheric retrievals are now a standard tool to analyze observations of exoplanet atmospheres. This data-driven approach quantitatively compares atmospheric models to observations in order to estimate atmospheric properties and their…
Considering the relatively high precision that will be reached by future observatories, it has recently become clear that one dimensional (1D) atmospheric models, in which the atmospheric temperature and composition of a planet are…
We present TransitFit, a package designed to fit exoplanetary transit light-curves. TransitFit offers multi-epoch, multi-wavelength fitting of multi-telescope transit data. TransitFit allows per-telescope detrending to be performed…