Related papers: Earth as a Proxy Exoplanet: Deconstructing and Rec…
Resolving spatially-varying exoplanet features from single-point light curves is essential for determining whether Earth-like worlds harbor geological features and/or climate systems that influence habitability. To evaluate the feasibility…
Even though it was not designed as an exoplanetary research mission, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has been opportunistically used for a novel experiment, in which Earth serves as a proxy exoplanet. More than two years of…
Characterizing the surfaces of rocky exoplanets via the scattered light will be an essential challenge to investigate the existence of life on habitable exoplanets. We present a simple reconstruction method for fractional areas of different…
As a test-bed for future investigations of directly imaged terrestrial exoplanets, we present the recovery of the surface components of the Earth from multi-band diurnal light curves obtained with the EPOXI spacecraft. We find that the…
[Abridged] To simulate the kinds of observations that will eventually be obtained for exoplanets, the Deep Impact spacecraft obtained light curves of Earth at seven wavebands spanning 300-1000 nm as part of the EPOXI mission of opportunity.…
The detections of small, rocky exoplanets have surged in recent years and will likely continue to do so. To know whether a rocky exoplanet is habitable, we have to characterise its atmosphere and surface. A promising characterisation method…
Transmission spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets is a potential tool for habitability screening. Transiting planets are present-day "Rosetta Stones" for understanding extrasolar planets because they offer the possibility to characterize…
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…
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…
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…
Scattered lights from terrestrial exoplanets provide valuable information about the planetary surface. Applying the surface reconstruction method proposed by Fujii et al. (2010) to both diurnal and annual variations of the scattered light,…
The search for extrasolar planets has already detected rocky planets and several planetary candidates with minimum masses that are consistent with rocky planets in the habitable zone of their host stars. A low-resolution spectrum in the…
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 phase or orbital light curves of extrasolar terrestrial planets in reflected or emitted light will contain information about their atmospheres and surfaces complementary to data obtained by other techniques such as spectrosopy. We show…
The Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be dedicated to detecting and characterising nearby exoplanets with sizes from sub-Neptune to Earth-size in the neighbourhood of the Sun. This goal is…
Reflected light photometry of terrestrial exoplanets could reveal the presence of oceans and continents, hence placing direct constraints on the current and long-term habitability of these worlds. Inferring the albedo map of a planet from…
A planet's spectrum is dynamic and only represents a time-dependent snapshot of its properties. Changing atmospheric conditions due to climate and weather patterns, particularly variation in cloud cover, can significantly affect the…
In the context of exoplanet detection, the performance of coronagraphs is limited by wavefront errors. To efficiently correct for these aberrations with a deformable mirror, it is mandatory to measure them using the science detector with a…
With the recent discoveries of hundreds of extrasolar planets, the search for planets like Earth and life in the universe, is quickly gaining momentum. In the future, large space observatories could directly detect the light scattered from…
In this study, we treat Earth as an exoplanet and investigate our home planet by means of a potential future mid-infrared (MIR) space mission called the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). We combine thermal spectra from an…