Related papers: Empirically Constraining the Spectra of Stellar Su…
Transmission spectroscopy during planetary transits, which is based on the measurements of the variations of planet-to-star radius ratio as a function of wavelength, is a powerful technique to study the atmospheric properties of transiting…
Transmission spectroscopy probes exoplanet atmospheres via the wavelength dependence of transit depths, but stellar contamination from magnetic activity can significantly bias these measurements. Activity-induced changes in the chromatic…
TRAPPIST-1e is a potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanet orbiting an ultra-cool M Dwarf star and is a key target for observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). One-dimensional photochemical modelling of terrestrial…
In this contribution, we present the StaggerGrid, a collaborative project for the construction of a comprehensive grid of time-dependent, three-dimensional (3D), hydrodynamic model atmospheres of solar- and late-type stars with different…
The number of satellites on low orbit has dramatically increased over the past years, raising concerns among the astronomical community about their impact on observations. Spectroscopic observations represent a large fraction of…
We have obtained ultra-high quality spectra (R=180,000; S/N>300) with unprecedented wavelength coverage (4400 to 7400 A) for a number of stars covering most of the HR diagram in order to test the predictions of models of stellar surface…
We introduce a new method to determine the relative contributions of different types of stars to the integrated light of nearby early-type galaxies. As is well known, the surface brightness of these galaxies shows pixel-to-pixel…
Neutron stars provide a unique opportunity to study strongly interacting matter under extreme density conditions. The intricacies of matter inside neutron stars and their equation of state are not directly visible, but determine bulk…
Spectroscopically measuring low levels of non-equilibrium phenomena (e.g. emission in the presence of a large thermal background) can be problematic due to an unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio. An approach is presented to use time-series…
The achievable level of precision on photospheric abundances of stars is a major limiting factor on investigations of exoplanet host star characteristics, the chemical histories of star clusters, and the evolution of the Milky Way and other…
Using forward models for representative exoplanet atmospheres and a radiometric instrument model, we have generated synthetic observational data to explore how well the major C- and O-bearing chemical species (CO, CO2, CH4, and H2O),…
Future astrophysics missions will seek extraterrestrial life via transmission and direct imaging observations. To assess habitability and biosignatures, we need robust retrieval tools to analyze observed spectra, and infer surface and…
With the rapid development of asteroseismology thanks to space-based photometry missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, TESS, and in the future, PLATO, and the use of inversion techniques, quasi-model-independent constraints on the stellar…
Transmission spectroscopy is one of the premier methods used to probe the temperature, composition, and cloud properties of exoplanet atmospheres. Recent studies have demonstrated that the multidimensional nature of exoplanet atmospheres --…
In long adaptive optics corrected exposures, exoplanet detections are currently limited by speckle noise originating from the telescope and instrument optics, and it is expected that such noise will also limit future high-contrast imaging…
We have developed a data reduction procedure to extract multiple spectra from a single two-dimensional Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) image of a crowded stellar field. This paper provides a description of our new technique,…
High-precision stellar analyses require hydrodynamic 3D modeling. Such models predict changes across stellar disks of spectral line shapes, asymmetries, and wavelength shifts. For testing models in stars other than the Sun, spatially…
JWST's MIRI LRS provides the first opportunity to spectroscopically characterize the surface compositions of close-in terrestrial exoplanets. Models for the bare-rock spectra of these planets often utilize a spectral library from R. Hu et…
Spectroscopy has an illustrious history delivering serendipitous discoveries and providing a stringent testbed for new physical predictions, including applications from trace materials detection, to understanding the atmospheres of stars…
The direct detection of exoplanets with high-contrast instruments can be boosted with high spectral resolution. For integral field spectrographs yielding hyperspectral data, this means that the field of view consists of diffracted starlight…