Related papers: Thermal Phase Curves in Hot Gas Giant Exoplanets E…
Although transit spectroscopy is a powerful method for studying the composition, thermal properties and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres, only a few transiting terrestrial exoplanets will be close enough to allow significant transit…
Context. The photometric signal we receive from a star hosting a planet is modulated by the variation of the planet signal with its orbital phase. Such phase variations are observed for transiting hot Jupiters with current instrumentation,…
Exoplanets that orbit close to their host stars are much more highly irradiated than their Solar System counterparts. Understanding the thermal structures and appearances of these planets requires investigating how their atmospheres respond…
Next-generation space telescopes will allow us to characterize terrestrial exoplanets. To do so effectively it will be crucial to make use of all available data. We investigate which atmospheric properties can, and cannot, be inferred from…
Multi-band phase variations in principle allow us to infer the longitudinal temperature distributions of planets as a function of height in their atmospheres. For example, 3.6 micron emission originates from deeper layers of the atmosphere…
We present a novel retrieval technique that attempts to model phase curve observations of exoplanets more realistically and reliably, which we call the 2.5-dimension (2.5-D) approach. In our 2.5-D approach we retrieve the vertical…
Kepler has detected numerous exoplanet transits by precise measurements of stellar light in a single visible-wavelength band. In addition to detection, the precise photometry provides phase curves of exoplanets, which can be used to study…
We present a uniform assessment of existing near-infrared Spitzer Space Telescope observations of planet-bearing stars. Using a simple four-parameter blackbody thermal model, we analyze stars for which photometry in at least one of…
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…
The occurrence of a planet transiting in front of its host star offers the opportunity to observe the planet's atmosphere filtering starlight. The fraction of occulted stellar flux is roughly proportional to the optically thick area of the…
Although there exists a large sample of known exoplanets, little spectroscopic data exists that can be used to study their global atmospheric properties. This deficiency can be addressed by performing phase-resolved spectroscopy --…
Aims. We analyse unpublished Spitzer observations of the thermal phase-curve of WASP-121 b, a benchmark ultra-hot Jupiter. Methods. We adopted the wavelet pixel-independent component analysis technique to remove challenging instrumental…
Characterization of exoplanets has matured in recent years, particularly through studies of exoplanetary atmospheres of transiting planets at infra-red wavelenegths. The primary source for such observations has been the Spitzer Space…
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 analysis of exoplanetary atmospheres often relies upon the observation of transit or eclipse events. While very powerful, these snapshots provide mainly 1-dimensional information on the planet structure and do not easily allow precise…
[Abridged] Recently, there have been a series of detections of molecules in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets using high spectral resolution (R~100,000) observations, mostly using the CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle…
Atmospheric temperatures are to be estimated from thermal emission spectra of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting M-stars as observed by current and future planned missions. To this end, a line-by-line radiative transfer code is used to generate…
We present new 3.6 and 4.5 $\mu m$ Spitzer phase curves for the highly irradiated hot Jupiter WASP-33b and the unusually dense Saturn-mass planet HD 149026b. As part of this analysis, we develop a new variant of pixel level decorrelation…
[Abridged] A key hypothesis in the field of exoplanet atmospheres is the trend of atmospheric thermal structure with planetary equilibrium temperature. We explore this trend and report here the first statistical detection of a transition in…
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…