Related papers: Reflected-light Phase Curves with PICASO: A Kepler…
Context. Clouds have already been detected in exoplanetary atmospheres. They play crucial roles in a planet's atmosphere and climate and can also create ambiguities in the determination of atmospheric parameters such as trace gas mixing…
RISTRETTO is a visible high-resolution spectrograph fed by an extreme adaptive optics (AO) system, to be proposed as a visitor instrument on ESO VLT. The main science goal of RISTRETTO is to pioneer the detection and atmospheric…
Research into light curves from stars (temporal variation of brightness) has completely changed how exoplanets are discovered or characterised. This study including star light curves from the Kepler dataset as a way to discover exoplanets…
We present thermal phase curve measurements for the hot Jupiter WASP-103b observed with Hubble/WFC3 and Spitzer/IRAC. The phase curves have large amplitudes and negligible hotspot offsets, indicative of poor heat redistribution to the…
Observations of the phase curves and secondary eclipses of extrasolar planets provide a window on the composition and thermal structure of the planetary atmospheres. For example, the photometric observations of secondary eclipses lead to…
An exoplanet's optical phase curve constrains the thermal emission and albedo of the planet's surface and/or atmosphere, as well as potentially constraining the mass via gravitational influences on the host star. Recently, Jansen & Kipping…
The characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is one of the key topics in modern astrophysics. To date, transmission spectroscopy has been the primary method used, but upcoming instruments will lay the foundation for advancing…
Due to its proximity to Earth, Jupiter of the Solar System serves as a unique case study for gas-giant exoplanets. In the current study, we perform fits of ab initio, reflective, semi-infinite, homogeneous model atmospheres to 61 phase…
With the availability of large-scale surveys like Kepler and TESS, there is a pressing need for automated methods to classify light curves according to known classes of variable stars. We introduce a new algorithm for classifying light…
The detection of reflected light from an exoplanet is a difficult technical challenge at optical wavelengths. Even though this signal is expected to replicate the stellar signal, not only is it several orders of magnitude fainter, but it is…
Clouds are prevalent in many of the exoplanet atmospheres that have been observed to date. For transiting exoplanets, we know if clouds are present because they mute spectral features and cause wavelength-dependent scattering. While the…
The extreme environments of transiting close-in exoplanets in highly-eccentric orbits are ideal for testing exo-climate physics. Spectroscopically resolved phase curves not only allow for the characterization of their thermal response to…
Before an exoplanet transit, atmospheric refraction bends light into the line of sight of an observer. The refracted light forms a stellar mirage, a distorted secondary image of the host star. I model this phenomenon and the resultant…
The phase or orbital light curves of extrasolar terrestrial planets in reflected or emitted light will contain information about their atmospheres and surfaces complementary to data obtained by other techniques such as spectrosopy. We show…
We generate theoretical albedo and reflection spectra for a full range of extrasolar giant planet (EGP) models, from Jovian to 51-Pegasi class objects. Our albedo modeling utilizes the latest atomic and molecular cross sections, a Mie…
We present radiation transfer models that demonstrate that reflected light levels from three dimensional (3D) exoplanetary atmospheres can be more than 50% lower than those predicted by models of homogeneous or smooth atmospheres. Compared…
We have conducted a comprehensive search for optical phase variations of all planet candidates with tight orbits in fifteen quarters of data from the Kepler space telescope. After correcting for systematics, we found eight systems that…
Optical secondary eclipse measurements made by \emph{Kepler} reveal a diverse set of geometric albedos for hot Jupiters with equilibrium temperatures between $1550-1700$ K. The presence or absence of high altitude condensates, such as…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
Reflection phase imaging provides label-free, high-resolution characterization of biological samples, typically using interferometric-based techniques. Here, we investigate reflection phase microscopy from intensity-only measurements under…