Related papers: The curse of clouds
A handful of enigmatic Jupiter-mass objects have been discovered orbiting pulsars. One such object, PSR\,J2322-2650b, uniquely resembles a hot Jupiter exoplanet due to its minimum density of 1.8 g/cm^3 and its ~1900 K equilibrium…
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…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided the first opportunity to study the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets and estimate their surface conditions. Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars are currently inaccessible with…
[Abridged] Recently, there have been a series of detections of molecules in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets using high spectral resolution (R~100,000) observations, mostly using the CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle…
Short-period gas giants (hot Jupiters) on circular orbits are expected to be tidally locked into synchronous rotation, with permanent daysides that face their host stars, and permanent nightsides that face the darkness of space. Thermal…
Exoplanet science is now in its full expansion, particularly after the CoRoT and Kepler space missions that led us to the discovery of thousands of extra-solar planets. The last decade has taught us that UV observations play a major role in…
Transiting exoplanets provide access to data to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Long-period transiting planets allow insight into planetary environments similar to the Solar System where, in…
Clouds form on extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs where lightning could occur. Lightning is a tracer of atmospheric convection, cloud formation and ionization processes as known from the Solar System, and may be significant for the…
In this paper, we investigate the detectability of radio emission from exoplanets, especially hot Jupiters, which are magnified by gravitational microlensing. Because hot Jupiters have orbital periods much shorter than the characteristic…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is predicted to make great advances in the field of exoplanet atmospheres. Its 25 m2 mirror means that it can reach unprecedented levels of precision in observations of transit spectra, and can thus…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
Nearly 30 years after the discovery of the first exoplanet around a main sequence star, thousands of planets have now been confirmed. These discoveries have completely revolutionized our understanding of planetary systems, revealing types…
Tremendous progress in the science of extrasolar planets has been achieved since the discovery of a Jupiter orbiting the nearby Sun-like star 51 Pegasi in 1995. Theoretical models have now reached enough maturity to predict the…
Spectral retrieval has long been a powerful tool for interpreting planetary remote sensing observations. Flexible, parameterised, agnostic models are coupled with inversion algorithms in order to infer atmospheric properties directly from…
The lowest-mass stars, brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets present challenges and opportunities for understanding dynamics and cloud formation processes in low-temperature atmospheres. For brown dwarfs, the formation, variation and rapid…
We highlight how guaranteed time observations (GTOs) and early release science (ERS) will advance understanding of exoplanet atmospheres and provide a glimpse into what transiting exoplanet science will be done with JWST during its first…
The past twenty years have revealed the diversity of planets that exist in the Universe. It turned out that most of exoplanets are different from the planets of our Solar System and thus, everything about them needs to be explored. Thanks…
Recent surveys have revealed that planets intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune ("super-Earths") are among the most common planets in the Galaxy. Atmospheric studies are the next step toward developing a comprehensive understanding…
Accurate estimations of atmospheric properties of exoplanets from transmission spectra require understanding of degeneracies between model parameters and observations that can resolve them. We conduct a systematic investigation of such…
An essential component of planetary climatology is knowledge of the tropospheric temperature field and its variability. Previous studies of Jupiter hinted at periodic behavior that was non-seasonal, as well as dynamical relationships…