Related papers: Earth as an Exoplanet: I. Time variable thermal em…
Rotation and orbital eccentricity both strongly influence planetary climate. Eccentricities can often be measured for exoplanets, but rotation rates are currently difficult or impossible to constrain. Here we examine how the combined…
Point source spectrophotometric ("single-point") light curves of Earth-like planets contain a surprising amount of information about the spatial features of those worlds. Spatially resolving these light curves is important for assessing…
Future telescopes will characterize rocky exoplanets in reflected light, revealing their albedo, which depends on surface, cloud, and atmospheric properties. Identifying these features is crucial for assessing habitability. We present…
Orbital phase-dependent variations in thermal emission and reflected stellar energy spectra can provide meaningful constraints on the climate states of terrestrial extrasolar planets orbiting M dwarf stars. Spatial distributions of water…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
Atmospheric temperatures are to be estimated from thermal emission spectra of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting M-stars as observed by current and future planned missions. To this end, a line-by-line radiative transfer code is used to generate…
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…
Next-generation space telescopes will allow us to characterize terrestrial exoplanets. To do so effectively it will be crucial to make use of all available data. We investigate which atmospheric properties can, and cannot, be inferred from…
The next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes will be able to observe rocky Earth-like planets in the near future, transiting their host star. We explore how the transmission spectrum of Earth changed through its geological…
In the last few years astronomical surveys have expanded the reach of planetary science into the realm of small and dense extrasolar worlds. These share a number of characteristics with the terrestrial and icy planetary objects of the Solar…
We are using computer models to explore the observational sensitivity to changes in atmospheric and surface properties, and the detectability of biosignatures, in the globally averaged spectra and light-curves of the Earth. Using AIRS…
An increasing number of potentially habitable terrestrial planets and planet candidates are found by ongoing planet search programs. The search for atmospheric signatures to establish planetary habitability and the presence of life might be…
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…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
Earth is the only planet known to harbor life and, as a result, the search for habitable and inhabited planets beyond the Solar System commonly focuses on analogs to our planet. However, Earth's atmosphere and surface environment have…
The detection of massive planets orbiting nearby stars has become almost routine, but current techniques are as yet unable to detect terrestrial planets with masses comparable to the Earth's. Future space-based observatories to detect…
With the increasing number of directly imaged giant exoplanets the current atmosphere models are often not capable of fully explaining the spectra and luminosity of the sources. A particularly challenging component of the atmosphere models…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…
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…
The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…