Related papers: Optimizing Ground-based Observations of O2 in Eart…
The advent of 8--10 meter class telescopes enables direct measurement of the chemical properties in the ionized gas of cosmologically--distant galaxies with the same nebular analysis techniques used in local H II regions. We show that…
The direct observation of cold and temperate planets within 1 to 10 AU would be extremely valuable for uncovering their atmospheric compositions but remains a formidable challenge with current astronomical methods. Ground-based optical…
Nitrogen is a biosignature gas that cannot be maintained in its Earth-like ratio with CO$_2$ under abiotic conditions. It has also proven to be notoriously hard to detect at optical and infrared wavelengths. Fortunately, the ultraviolet…
Solar System observations that serve as analogs for exoplanet remote sensing data can provide important opportunities to validate ideas and models related to exoplanet environments. Critically, and unlike true exoplanet observations, Solar…
Context. Collecting a large variety of exoplanetary atmosphere measurements is crucial to improve our understanding of exoplanets. In this context, it is likely that the field would benefit from broad species surveys, particularly using…
We study the sensitivity of the methods available for abundance determinations in H II regions to potential observational problems. We compare the dispersions they introduce around the oxygen and nitrogen abundance gradients when applied to…
We present a comprehensive set of spectropolarimetric observations of Earthshine as obtained by FORS2 at the VLT for phase angles from 50degree to 135degree (Sun-Earth-Moon angle), covering a spectral range from 430nm to 920nm. The degree…
High contrast direct imaging of exoplanets can provide many important observables, including measurements of the orbit, spectra that probe the lower layers of the atmosphere, and phase variations of the planet, but cannot directly measure…
Aims. In this paper we investigate the detectability of the molecular oxygen in icy dust grain mantles towards astronomical objects. Methods. We present a systematic set of experiments with O2-H2O ice mixtures designed to disentangle how…
Cosmological observations from ground at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths are affected by atmospheric absorption and consequent emission. The low and high frequency (sky noise) fluctuations of atmospheric performance imply careful…
This work describes the context and approach for the detection of spectroscopic signatures from planets in the habitable zone of nearby stars. By understanding the limitations of current observatories, future telescopes can be understood,…
Core-level spectra of 1s electrons of elements heavier than Ne show significant relativistic effects. We combine advances in orbital optimized DFT (OO-DFT) with the spin-free exact two-component (X2C) model for scalar relativistic effects,…
Doppler Imaging produces 2D global maps of rotating objects using high-dispersion spectroscopy. When applied to brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets, this technique can constrain global atmospheric dynamics and/or magnetic effects on these…
Orbital solutions for binary or multiple stellar systems that combine astrometry (e.g., position angles and angular separations) with spectroscopy (radial velocities) have important advantages over astrometric-only or spectroscopic-only…
I derive analytic scalings for coronagraphic imaging searches for extrasolar planets. I compute the efficiency of detecting planets about any given star, and from this compute dimensionless distribution functions for the detected planets as…
Astronomic line mapping with single-pixel instruments is usually performed in an on-the-fly (OTF) or a raster-mapping mode depending on the capabilities of the telescope and the instrument. The observing efficiency can be increased by…
Data from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite is essential to many carbon management strategies. A retrieval algorithm is used to estimate CO2 concentration using the radiance data measured by OCO-2. However, due to…
Detecting H2O in exoplanet atmospheres is the first step on the path to determining planet habitability. Coronagraphic design currently limits the observing strategy used to detect H2O, requiring the choice of specific bandpasses to…
One of the most prolific methods of studying exoplanet atmospheres is transmission spectroscopy, which measures the difference between the depth of an exoplanet's transit signal at various wavelengths and attempts to correlate the depth…
Infrared OH lines at 1.55 - 1.56 um in the H-band were obtained with the Phoenix high-resolution spectrograph at the 2.1m telescope of the Kitt Peak National Observatory for a sample of 14 metal-poor stars. Detailed analyses of the sample…