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Clouds are ubiquitous in extrasolar planet atmospheres and are critical to our understanding of planetary climate and chemistry. They also represent one of the greater challenges to overcome when trying to interpret transit transmission…
We explore how well James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spectra will likely constrain bulk atmospheric properties of transiting exoplanets. We start by modeling the atmospheres of archetypal hot Jupiter, warm Neptune, warm sub-Neptune, and…
Today's most detailed characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is accessible via transit spectroscopy (TS). Detecting transiting exoplanets only yields their size, and it is thus standard to measure a planet's mass before moving towards…
We describe how the accurate characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres in the ELT and JWST era will inevitably require taking into consideration the stellar inhomogeneities caused by convection and magnetic fields. The existing evidence…
Study Analysis Group 21 (SAG21) of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG) was organized to study the effect of stellar contamination on space-based transmission spectroscopy, a method for studying exoplanetary…
Eclipse exoplanet spectroscopy has yielded detection of H_2O, CH_4, CO_2 and CO in the atmosphere of hot jupiters and neptunes. About 40 large terrestrial planets are announced or confirmed, two of which are transiting, and another deemed…
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…
We have entered the era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We use the first JWST transmission spectrum of the hot Saturn-mass exoplanet, WASP-39 b, obtained with the NIRSpec instrument in the 3-5 $\mu$m range to investigate (a) what…
One of the main endeavors of the field of exoplanetary sciences is the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres on a population level. The current method of choice to accomplish this task is transmission spectroscopy, where the apparent…
Detecting and characterising exoplanet atmospheres remains challenging because atmospheric signals can be comparable to residual noise and instrumental/astrophysical systematics. Spectral features span from a few ppm for small planets up to…
We propose a new data analysis method for obtaining transmission spectra of exoplanet atmospheres and brightness variation across the stellar disk from transit observations. The new method is capable of recovering exoplanet atmosphere…
The critical first step in the search for life on exoplanets over the next decade is to determine whether rocky planets transiting small M-dwarf stars possess atmospheres and, if so, what processes sculpt them over time. Because of its…
Given the forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which will allow observ- ing exoplanet atmospheres with unprecedented signal-over-noise ratio, spectral coverage and spatial resolution, the uncertainties in the…
It is possible to learn a great deal about exoplanet atmospheres even when we cannot spatially resolve the planets from their host stars. In this chapter, we overview the basic techniques used to characterize transiting exoplanets -…
TRAPPIST-1 e is one of the very few rocky exoplanets that is both amenable to atmospheric characterization and that resides in the habitable zone of its star -- located at a distance from its star such that it might, with the right…
A main source of bias in transmission spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres is magnetic activity of the host star in the form of stellar spots, faculae or flares. However, the fact that main-sequence stars have a chromosphere and a corona,…
We are on the verge of characterizing the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zones of M dwarf stars. Due to their large planet-to-star radius ratios and higher frequency of transits, terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M…
The era of exoplanet characterization is upon us. For a subset of exoplanets -- the transiting planets -- physical properties can be measured, including mass, radius, and atmosphere characteristics. Indeed, measuring the atmospheres of a…
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 majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of…