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Chemical models are routinely used to predict the atmospheric composition of exoplanets and compare it with the composition retrieved from observations, but little is known about the reliability of the calculated composition. We carried out…
In the era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the dramatic improvement in the spectra of exoplanetary atmospheres demands a corresponding leap forward in our ability to analyze them: atmospheric retrievals need to be performed on…
With a scheduled launch in October 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to revolutionise the field of atmospheric characterization of exoplanets. The broad wavelength coverage and high sensitivity of its instruments will…
Spectral retrieval techniques are currently our best tool to interpret the observed exoplanet atmospheric data. Said techniques retrieve the optimal atmospheric components and parameters by identifying the best fit to an observed…
Over the last decade, exoplanetary transmission spectra have yielded an unprecedented understanding about the physical and chemical nature of planets outside our solar system. Physical and chemical knowledge is mainly extracted via fitting…
Stellar contamination has long been recognized as a major bottleneck in transmission spectroscopy, limiting our ability to accurately characterize exoplanet atmospheres-particularly for terrestrial worlds. In response, significant…
Multi-model ensembles provide a pragmatic approach to the representation of model uncertainty in climate prediction. However, such representations are inherently ad hoc, and, as shown, probability distributions of climate variables based on…
The field of exoplanet atmospheric characterization is trending towards comparative studies involving many planetary systems, and using Bayesian hierarchical modelling is a natural next step. Here we demonstrate two use cases. We first use…
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…
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…
Exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval refers to the inference of atmospheric properties of an exoplanet given an observed spectrum. The atmospheric properties include the chemical compositions, temperature profiles, clouds/hazes, and energy…
For objects in the low Earth orbit region, uncertainty in atmospheric density estimation is an important source of orbit prediction error, which is critical for space situational awareness activities such as the satellite conjunction…
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…
The use of machine learning is becoming ubiquitous in astronomy, but remains rare in the study of the atmospheres of exoplanets. Given the spectrum of an exoplanetary atmosphere, a multi-parameter space is swept through in real time to find…
We present a retrieval method based on Bayesian analysis to infer the atmospheric compositions and surface or cloud-top pressures from transmission spectra of exoplanets with general compositions. In this study, we identify what can…
Advancements in our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres, from massive gas giants down to rocky worlds, depend on the constructive challenges between observations and models. We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in…
With over 1800 planets discovered outside of the Solar System in the past two decades, the field of exoplanetology has broadened our perspective on planetary systems. Research priorities are now moving from planet detection to planet…
Exoplanets are now being discovered in profusion. However, to understand their character requires spectral models and data. These elements of remote sensing can yield temperatures, compositions, and even weather patterns, but only if…
The advent of high-resolution spectroscopy as a method for exoplanet atmospheric characterization has expanded our capability to study non-transiting planets, increasing the number of planets accessible for observation. Many of the most…
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…