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Atmospheric refraction affects to various degrees exoplanet transit, lunar eclipse, as well as stellar occultation observations. Exoplanet retrieval algorithms often use analytical expressions for the column abundance along a ray traversing…
The characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is one of the key topics in modern astrophysics. To date, transmission spectroscopy has been the primary method used, but upcoming instruments will lay the foundation for advancing…
Inverse techniques are used to extract information about an exoplanet's atmosphere. These techniques are prone to biased results if the appropriate forward model is not used. One assumption used in a forward model is to assume that the…
The characterization of planetary atmospheres is a daunting task, pushing current observing facilities to their limits. The next generation of high-resolution spectrographs mounted on large telescopes -- such as ESPRESSO@VLT and HIRES@ELT…
Exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval refers to the inference of atmospheric properties of an exoplanet given an observed spectrum. The atmospheric properties include the chemical compositions, temperature profiles, clouds/hazes, and energy…
Machine learning is now used in many areas of astrophysics, from detecting exoplanets in Kepler transit signals to removing telescope systematics. Recent work demonstrated the potential of using machine learning algorithms for atmospheric…
Inferring atmospheric properties of exoplanets from observed spectra is key to understanding their formation, evolution, and habitability. Since traditional Bayesian approaches to atmospheric retrieval (e.g., nested sampling) are…
The search for life beyond the Solar System remains a primary goal of current and near-future missions, including NASA's upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). However, research into determining the habitability of terrestrial…
A primary goal of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to detect and measure the abundance of biosignature molecules, such as water (H2O) and oxygen (O2), in the atmosphere of Earth analogs. This is expected to require deep…
RISTRETTO is a visible high-resolution spectrograph fed by an extreme adaptive optics (AO) system, to be proposed as a visitor instrument on ESO VLT. The main science goal of RISTRETTO is to pioneer the detection and atmospheric…
The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) means that we will soon have the capability to characterize the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets. However, it is still unknown whether such planets orbiting close to M dwarf stars…
The search for life in the universe is currently focused on Earth-analog planets. However, we should be prepared to find a diversity of terrestrial exoplanets not only in terms of host star but also in terms of surface environment.…
Before an exoplanet transit, atmospheric refraction bends light into the line of sight of an observer. The refracted light forms a stellar mirage, a distorted secondary image of the host star. I model this phenomenon and the resultant…
With dedicated exoplanet surveys underway for multiple extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) instruments, the near-future prospects of RV exoplanet science are promising. These surveys' generous time allocations are expected to…
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…
Sea surface temperature (SST) is an essential climate variable that can be measured via ground truth, remote sensing, or hybrid model methodologies. Here, we celebrate SST surveillance progress via the application of a few relevant…
Exoplanets with a long orbital period are difficult to discover by extant methods. Our first publication (Lerner, P., A. Mayer, T. E. Sullivan. 2023. A new method for the discovery of the distant exoplanets. SPIE Proceedings 12680:…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided the first opportunity to study the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets and estimate their surface conditions. Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars are currently inaccessible with…
In the near future, extremely-large ground-based telescopes may conduct some of the first searches for life beyond the solar system. High-spectral resolution observations of reflected light from nearby exoplanetary atmospheres could be used…
Spectral retrieval has proven to be a powerful tool for constraining the physical properties and atmospheric compositions of extrasolar planet atmospheres from observed spectra, primarily for transiting objects but also for directly imaged…