Related papers: Prospects for Characterizing the Haziest Sub-Neptu…
The hot sub-Saturn-mass exoplanet HAT-P-12b is an ideal target for transmission spectroscopy because of its inflated radius. We observed one transit of the planet with the multi-object double spectrograph (MODS) on the Large Binocular…
The identification of molecules in exoplanetary atmospheres is only possible thanks to the availability of high-resolution molecular spectroscopic data. However, due to its intensive and time-consuming generation process, at present, only…
The High Optical Resolution Spectrograph (HORuS) is a new high-resolution echelle spectrograph available on the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). We report on the first HORuS observations of a transit of the super-Earth planet 55 Cnc…
High-contrast, medium-resolution spectroscopy with JWST can resolve molecular and isotopic features in cool substellar atmospheres, but for close-in companions the extracted spectra can be biased by wavelength-dependent residual stellar…
We present high resolution transmission spectra of giant planet atmospheres from a coupled 3-D atmospheric dynamics and transmission spectrum model that includes Doppler shifts which arise from winds and planetary motion. We model jovian…
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…
Extremely low density planets ('super-puffs') are a small but intriguing subset of the transiting planet population. With masses in the super-Earth range ($1-10$ M$_{\oplus}$) and radii akin to those of giant planets ($>4$ R$_{\oplus}$),…
Context: Transmission spectroscopy has become a prominent tool for characterizing the atmospheric properties on close-in transiting planets. Recent observations have revealed a remarkable diversity in exoplanet spectra, which show…
Although all-sky surveys have led to the discovery of dozens of young planets, little is known about their atmospheres. Here, we present multi-wavelength transit data for the super Neptune-sized exoplanet, K2-33b -- the youngest (~10 Myr)…
The planned launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 will herald a new era of exoplanet spectroscopy. JWST will be the first telescope sensitive enough to potentially characterize terrestrial planets from their transmission spectra.…
Hubble is still in prime observing condition for making transformative discoveries in UV astronomy. In this white paper we describe the science case for a deep (S/N>30) UV spectroscopic survey with HST/COS targeting approximately 20 QSOs at…
Recent observations of the transiting super-Earth GJ 1214b reveal that its atmosphere may be hydrogen-rich or water-rich in nature, with clouds or hazes potentially affecting its transmission spectrum in the optical and very-near-IR. Here…
Observations of stellar surfaces - except for the Sun - are hampered by their tiny angular extent, while observed spectral lines are smeared by averaging over the stellar surface, and by stellar rotation. Exoplanet transits can be used to…
The search for habitable, Earth-like exoplanets faces major observational challenges due to their small size and faint signals. M-dwarf stars offer a promising avenue to detect and study smaller planets, especially sub-Neptunes-among the…
Spectroscopic observations are extremely important for determining the composition, structure, and surface gravity of exoplanetary atmospheres. High resolution spectroscopy of the planet itself has only been demonstrated a handful of times.…
Infrared solar occultation measurements are well established for remote sensing of Earth's atmosphere, and the corresponding primary transit spectroscopy has turned out to be valuable for characterization of extrasolar planets. Our…
Atmospheres of transiting extrasolar giant planets (EGPs) such as HD 209458 b must impose features on the spectra of their parent stars during transits; these features contain information about the physical conditions and chemical…
High resolution imaging is an important tool for follow-up study of exoplanet candidates found via transit detection with the Kepler Mission. We discuss here HST imaging with the WFC3 of 23 stars that host particularly interesting Kepler…
Using the integral field spectrograph OSIRIS, on the Keck II telescope, broad near-infrared H and K-band spectra of the young exoplanet HR8799b have been obtained. In addition, six new narrow-band photometric measurements have been taken…
The JWST has ushered in a new era in atmospheric characterisations of temperate low-mass exoplanets with recent detections of carbon-bearing molecules in the candidate Hycean world K2-18 b. We investigated JWST observations of the TOI-270…