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With JWST slated to gain high fidelity time dependent data on brown dwarf atmospheres, it is highly anticipated to do the same for directly imaged, sub-Jupiter exoplanets. With this new capability, the need for a full 3D understanding to…
Sub-Neptune exoplanets frequently exhibit muted transmission spectra, with GJ 1214 b being the most prominent example. Following years of intense observing campaigns yielding featureless planetary spectra, recent observations with JWST…
Atmospheres of highly irradiated gas giant planets host a large variety of atomic and ionic species. Here we observe the thermal emission spectra of the two ultra-hot Jupiters WASP-33b and KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b in the near-infrared wavelength…
The James Webb Space Telescope and the future Habitable Worlds Observatory aim to discover exoplanet atmospheric spectra that detect life. Currently, most existing spectral "retrieval" algorithms focus on inferring the abundances of…
Primordial evaluations of the deuterium abundance should provide one of the best tests of Big Bang nucleosynthesis models. Space as well as ground based observations seem however to result in different values. This asks for more…
We use signal enhancement techniques and a matched filter analysis to search for the K band spectroscopic absorption signature of the close orbiting extrasolar giant planet, HD 189733b. With timeseries observations taken with NIRSPEC at the…
Lightning has been suggested to play a role in triggering the occurrence of bio-ready chemical species. Future missions (PLATO, ARIEL, HWO, LIFE) and ground-based ELTs will investigate the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets. We…
We present the detection of deuterated molecular hydrogen (HD) in the remote Universe in a damped Lyman-alpha cloud at zabs=2.418 toward the quasar SDSS J143912.04+111740.5. This is a unique system in which H2 and CO molecules are also…
Following the discovery of the first exoplanet candidate transiting a white dwarf (WD), a "white dwarf opportunity" for characterizing the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets around WDs is emerging. Large planet-to-star size ratios and…
There are different environments in the interstellar medium (ISM), depending on the density, temperature and chemical composition. Among them, molecular clouds, often referred to as the cradle of stars, are paradigmatic environments…
The first potential exoplanet biosignature detections are likely to be ambiguous due to the potential for false positives: abiotic planetary processes that produce observables similar to those anticipated from a global biosphere. Here we…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet,…
The complex organic molecules (COMs) detected in star-forming regions are the precursors of the prebiotic molecules that can lead to the emergence of life. By studying COMs in more evolved protoplanetary disks we can gain a better…
L 98-59 d is a Super-Earth planet orbiting an M-type star. We performed retrievals on the transmission spectrum of L 98-59 d obtained using NIRSpec G395H during a single transit, from JWST Cycle 1 GTO 1224. The wavelength range of this…
Earth's deciduous plants have a sharp order-of-magnitude increase in leaf reflectance between approximately 700 and 750 nm wavelength. This strong reflectance of Earth's vegetation suggests that surface biosignatures with sharp spectral…
Photochemistry is a fundamental process of planetary atmospheres that regulates the atmospheric composition and stability. However, no unambiguous photochemical products have been detected in exoplanet atmospheres to date. Recent…
Early results from the JWST-MIRI guaranteed time programs on protostars (JOYS) and disks (MINDS) are presented. Thanks to the increased sensitivity, spectral and spatial resolution of the MIRI spectrometer, the chemical inventory of the…
Chemical models and experiments indicate that interstellar dust grains and their ice mantles play an important role in the production of complex organic molecules (COMs). To date, the most complex solid-phase molecule detected with…
Chemical disequilibrium in planetary atmospheres has been proposed as a generalized method for detecting life on exoplanets through remote spectroscopy. Among solar system planets with substantial atmospheres, the modern Earth has the…