Related papers: Stellar Models Also Limit Exoplanet Atmosphere Stu…
Inferring the climate and surface conditions of terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone is a major goal for the field of exoplanet science. This pursuit will require both statistical analyses of the population of habitable planets as…
Exoplanet host star activity, in the form of unocculted star spots or faculae, alters the observed transmission and emission spectra of the exoplanet. This effect can be exacerbated when combining data from different epochs if the stellar…
Context. The crust composition of rocky exoplanets with a substantial atmosphere can not be observed directly. However, recent developments start to allow the observation and characterisation of their atmospheres. Aims. We aim to establish…
In addition to planets and other small bodies, stellar systems will likely also host exozodiacal dust, or exozodi. This warm dust primarily resides in or near the habitable zone of a star, and scatters stellar light in visible to NIR…
Studying the atmospheres of exoplanets is one of the most promising ways to learn about distant worlds beyond our solar system. The composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere can provide critical insights into its geology and potential…
Atmospheric characterization of Earth-like exoplanets through reflected light spectroscopy is a key goal for upcoming direct imaging missions. A critical challenge in this endeavor is the accurate determination of planetary mass, which may…
The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system represents an exceptional opportunity for the atmospheric characterization of temperate terrestrial exoplanets with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Assessing the potential impact of stellar…
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…
We present models designed to quantify the effects of stellar activity on exoplanet transit spectroscopy and atmospheric characterization at low (R = 100) and high (R = 100,000) spectral resolution. We study three model classes mirroring…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
The planned launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 will herald a new era of exoplanet spectroscopy. JWST will be the first telescope sensitive enough to potentially characterize terrestrial planets from their transmission spectra.…
The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…
Atmospheric refraction affects to various degrees exoplanet transit, lunar eclipse, as well as stellar occultation observations. Exoplanet retrieval algorithms often use analytical expressions for the column abundance along a ray traversing…
Context. Spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres at high resolving powers is rapidly gaining popularity to measure the presence of atomic and molecular species. While this technique is robust against contaminant absorption in the Earth's…
Disintegrating planets are ultra-short-period exoplanets that appear to have a comet-like dust tail. They are commonly interpreted as low-mass planets whose solid surface is evaporating and whose tail is made of recondensing minerals.…
Standard Bayesian retrievals for exoplanet atmospheric parameters from transmission spectroscopy, while well understood and widely used, are generally computationally expensive. In the era of the JWST and other upcoming observatories,…
Eclipsing planetary systems give us an important window on extrasolar planet atmospheres. By measuring the depth of the secondary eclipse, when the planet moves behind the star, we can estimate the strength of the thermal emission from the…
Exoplanet transit spectroscopy enables the characterization of distant worlds, and will yield key results for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. However, transit spectra models are often simplified, omitting potentially important processes…
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 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…