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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is nearing its launch date of 2018, and will undoubtedly revolutionize our knowledge of exoplanet atmospheres. While several studies have explored what the limits of the telescope will be in terms of…
The JWST provides exoplanet transit observations with unprecedented spectral coverage, enabling detailed atmospheric characterisation. However, systematics introduced during data reduction can lead to small but significant uncertainties…
Detecting and characterizing the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets has proven to be challenging for JWST. Transit spectroscopy of the TRAPPIST-1 planets has been impacted by the effects of spots and faculae on the host star. Secondary…
Projections of future climate change rely heavily on climate models, and combining climate models through a multi-model ensemble is both more accurate than a single climate model and valuable for uncertainty quantification. However,…
The James Webb Space Telescope will enable astronomers to obtain exoplanet spectra of unprecedented precision. Especially the MIRI instrument may shed light on the nature of the cloud particles obscuring planetary transmission spectra in…
Exoplanet research is carried out at the limits of the capabilities of current telescopes and instruments. The studied signals are weak, and often embedded in complex systematics from instrumental, telluric, and astrophysical sources.…
We investigate at what abundances various hydrocarbon molecules (e.g. acetylene (C$_2$H$_2$), ethylene (C$_2$H$_4$), and methane (CH$_4$)) become detectable when observing the atmospheres of various planets using JWST. We focused on…
Atmospheric retrievals are now a standard tool to analyze observations of exoplanet atmospheres. This data-driven approach quantitatively compares atmospheric models to observations in order to estimate atmospheric properties and their…
Much of the focus of exoplanet atmosphere analysis in the coming decade will be atinfrared wavelengths, with the planned launches of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). However,…
We present a new method for performing atmospheric retrieval on ground-based, high-resolution data of exoplanets. Our method combines cross-correlation functions with a random forest, a supervised machine learning technique, to overcome…
Recent Spitzer infrared measurements of hot Jupiter eclipses suggest that eclipse mapping techniques could be used to spatially resolve the day-side photospheric emission of these planets using partial occultations. As a first step in this…
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…
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…
Context: Before JWST, telescope observations were not sensitive enough to constrain the nature of clouds in exo-atmospheres. Recent observations, however, have inferred cloud signatures as well as haze-enhanced scattering slopes motivating…
A primary objective of exoplanet atmosphere characterisation is to learn about planet formation and evolution, however, this is challenged by degeneracies. To determine whether differences in atmospheric composition can be reliably traced…
Identifying pure components in mixtures is a common yet challenging problem. The associated unmixing process requires the pure components, also known as endmembers, to be sufficiently spectrally distinct. Even with this requirement met,…
The current sparse wavelength range coverage of exoplanet direct imaging observations, and the fact that models are defined using a finite wavelength range, lead both to uncertainties on effective temperature determination.We study these…
Our purpose is to release a chemical network, and the associated rate coefficients, developed for the temperature and pressure range relevant to hot Jupiters atmospheres. Using this network, we study the vertical atmospheric composition of…
Exoplanet atmospheric retrieval is a computational technique widely used to infer properties of planetary atmospheres from remote spectroscopic observations. Retrieval codes typically employ Bayesian sampling algorithms or machine learning…
JWST will provide moderate resolution transit spectra with continuous wavelength coverage from the optical to the mid-infrared for the first time. In this paper, we illustrate how different aerosol species, size-distributions, and spatial…