Related papers: 3-D climate simulations for the detectability of P…
The recent detections of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and the promise of characterizing their atmospheres motivates a need to understand how the diversity of possible planetary parameters affects the climate of…
More than two dozen short-period Jupiter-mass gas giant planets have been discovered around nearby solar-type stars in recent years, several of which undergo transits, making them ideal for the detection and characterization of their…
Modeling the atmospheres of exoplanets is fundamental to understanding their atmospheric physics and chemical processes. While one-dimensional (1D) atmospheric models with 1D radiative transfer (RT) have been widely used, advances in…
Exoplanetary science is among the fastest evolving fields of today's astronomical research. Ground-based planet-hunting surveys alongside dedicated space missions (Kepler, CoRoT) are delivering an ever-increasing number of exoplanets, now…
Rocky planets hosted by close-in extrasolar systems are likely to be tidally locked in 1:1 spin-orbit resonance, a configuration where they exhibit permanent dayside and nightside. Because of the resulting day-night temperature gradient,…
The majority of potentially habitable exoplanets detected orbit stars cooler than the Sun, and therefore are irradiated by a stellar spectrum peaking at longer wavelengths than that incident on Earth. Here, we present results from a set of…
The search for extrasolar rocky planets has already found the first transiting rocky super-Earth, Corot 7b, with a surface temperature that allows for magma oceans. Here we ask if we could distinguish rocky planets with recent major…
In this paper, we study the feasibility of obtaining near-infrared spectra of bright extrasolar planets with the 2nd generation VLTI Spectro-Imager instrument (VSI), which has the required angular resolution to resolve nearby hot Extrasolar…
Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbour, is a low-mass M5 dwarf orbiting in a triple system. An Earth-mass planet with an 11 day period has been discovered around this star. The star's mass has been estimated only indirectly using a…
Proxima Centauri (Cen) has been the subject of many flaring studies due to its proximity and potential to host habitable planets. The discovery of millimeter flares from this M dwarf with ALMA has opened a new window into the flaring…
We demonstrate the effectiveness of the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory mission concept for constraining the atmospheric properties of hot and warm gas giants and super Earths. Synthetic primary and secondary transit spectra for a…
Atmospheric retrievals of exoplanet transmission spectra allow constraints on the composition and structure of the day-night terminator region. Such retrievals in the past have typically assumed one-dimensional temperature structures which…
We research the requirements of High Contrast Imaging when combined with the cross correlation (CC) of high resolution spectra with known spectroscopic templates for detecting and characterising exoplanets in reflected light. We simulate…
The class of transiting cold Jupiters, orbiting at $\gtrsim0.5-1.0$ au, is to-date underpopulated. Probing their atmospheric composition and physical characteristics is particularly valuable, as it allows for direct comparisons with the…
The hot Jupiter WASP-43b has now joined the ranks of transiting hot Jupiters HD 189733b and HD 209458b as an exoplanet with a large array of observational constraints on its atmospheric properties. Because WASP-43b receives a similar…
Thanks to the advances in modern instrumentation we have learned about many exoplanets that span a wide range of masses and composition. Studying their atmospheres provides insight into planetary origin, evolution, dynamics, and…
To date, the ability for observers to reveal the composition or thermal structure of an exoplanet's atmosphere has rested on two techniques: high-contrast direct imaging and time-series observations of transiting exoplanets. The former is…
High resolution spectroscopy has opened the way for new, detailed study of exoplanet atmospheres. There is evidence that this technique can be sensitive to the complex, three-dimensional (3D) atmospheric structure of these planets. In this…
The recently developed JWST Exoplanet Observation Simulator (JexoSim) simulates transit spectroscopic observations of exoplanets by JWST with each of its four instruments using a time-domain approach. Previously we reported the validation…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…