Related papers: Earth as an Exoplanet: A Two-dimensional Alien Map
We study the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere to derive detectable features in low resolution of different global geochemical cycles on exoplanets - using the sulphur cycle as our example. We derive low resolution detectable features for…
How can scientists conclude with high confidence that an exoplanet hosts life? As telescopes come on line over the next 20 years that can directly observe photons from terrestrial exoplanets, this question will dictate the activities of…
Thermal light-curve analysis is a powerful approach to probe the thermal structures of exoplanetary atmospheres, which are greatly influenced by the planetary obliquity and eccentricity. Here we investigate the thermal light curves of…
Since the first discovery of an extra-solar planet around a main-sequence star, in 1995, the number of detected exoplanets has increased enormously. Over the past two decades, observational instruments (both onboard and on ground-based…
The search for life in the universe mainly uses modern Earth as a template. However, we know that Earth's atmospheric composition changed significantly through its geological evolution. Recent discoveries show that transiting, potentially…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
Specularly reflected light, or glint, from an ocean surface may provide a useful observational tool for studying extrasolar terrestrial planets. Detection of sea-surface glints would differentiate ocean-bearing terrestrial planets, i.e.…
The majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of…
Using a 3D GCM, we create dynamical model atmospheres of a representative transiting giant exoplanet, HD 209458b. We post-process these atmospheres with an opacity code to obtain transit radius spectra during the primary transit. Using a…
The analysis of exoplanetary atmospheres often relies upon the observation of transit or eclipse events. While very powerful, these snapshots provide mainly 1-dimensional information on the planet structure and do not easily allow precise…
A key to understand exoplanets is characterisation of their host stars. One of the most powerful tools to characterise stellar properties like effective temperature, surface gravity and metallicity, is spectroscopy based on observations of…
(abridged) The Super-Earth candidate GL 581 d is the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. Therefore, GL 581 d is used to illustrate a hypothetical detailed spectroscopic characterization of such planets. Atmospheric profiles from…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Clouds are ubiquitous\, -- \,they arise for every solar system planet that possesses an atmosphere and have also been suggested as a leading mechanism for obscuring spectral features in exoplanet observations. As exoplanet observations…
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet,…
We describe how to generate a longitudinal brightness map for a tidally locked exoplanet from its phase function light curve. We operate under a number of simplifying assumptions, neglecting limb darkening/brightening, star spots, detector…
Transit spectroscopy is a powerful tool to decode the chemical composition of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. In this paper we focus on unsupervised techniques for analyzing spectral data from transiting exoplanets. We demonstrate…
As the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres proceeds, providing insights into atmospheric chemistry and composition, a key question is how much deeper into the planet we might be able to see from its atmospheric properties alone. For…
A significant body of work on simulating the remote appearance of Earth-like exoplanets has been done over the last decade. The research is driven by the prospect of characterizing habitable planets beyond the Solar System in the near…
Context. The crust composition of rocky exoplanets with a substantial atmosphere can not be observed directly. However, recent developments start to allow the observation and characterisation of their atmospheres. Aims. We aim to establish…