Related papers: STCTM: a forward modeling and retrieval framework …
Transmission spectra probe the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets, but these observations are also subject to signals introduced by magnetic active regions on host stars. Here we outline scientific opportunities in the next decade for…
Transmission spectroscopy during planetary transits is expected to be a major source of information on the atmospheres of small (approximately Earth-sized) exoplanets in the next two decades. This technique, however, is intrinsically…
Transmission spectroscopy is still the preferred characterization technique for exoplanet atmospheres, although it presents unique challenges that translate into characterization bottlenecks when robust mitigation strategies are missing.…
Stellar contamination has long been recognized as a major bottleneck in transmission spectroscopy, limiting our ability to accurately characterize exoplanet atmospheres-particularly for terrestrial worlds. In response, significant…
The most productive tracer of exoplanetary atmospheric escape is the measurement of excess absorption in the near-infrared metastable helium triplet during transits. Atmospheric escape of a close-in planet's atmosphere plays a role in its…
Transmission spectra are differential measurements that utilize stellar illumination to probe transiting exoplanet atmospheres. Any spectral difference between the illuminating light source and the disk-integrated stellar spectrum due to…
Stellar surface heterogeneities, such as spots and faculae, often contaminate exoplanet transit spectra, hindering precise atmospheric characterization. We demonstrate a novel, epoch-based, model-independent method to mitigate stellar…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the search for and characterization of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres in the habitable zone via transmission spectroscopy. However, relatively little work has been done to use solar…
Exoplanet transmission spectra, which measure the absorption of light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit, are most often assessed globally, resulting in a single spectrum per planetary atmosphere. However, the inherent…
Spectral retrieval techniques are currently our best tool to interpret the observed exoplanet atmospheric data. Said techniques retrieve the optimal atmospheric components and parameters by identifying the best fit to an observed…
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…
Transmission spectroscopy is one of the premier methods used to probe the temperature, composition, and cloud properties of exoplanet atmospheres. Recent studies have demonstrated that the multidimensional nature of exoplanet atmospheres --…
Discoveries of terrestrial, Earth-sized exoplanets that lie within the habitable zone (HZ) of their host stars continue to occur at increasing rates. Transit spectroscopy can potentially enable the detection of molecular signatures from…
The technique of transmission spectroscopy -- the variation of the planetary radius with wavelength due to opacity sources in the planet's terminator region -- has been to date one of the most successful in the characterization of exoplanet…
Robust atmospheric and radiative transfer modeling will be required to properly interpret reflected light and thermal emission spectra of terrestrial exoplanets. This will help break observational degeneracies between the numerous…
Transmission spectroscopy is currently the technique best suited to study a wide range of planetary atmospheres, leveraging the filtering of a star's light by a planet's atmosphere rather than its own emission. However, as both a planet and…
Our ability to observe, detect, and characterize exoplanetary atmospheres has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years, aided largely by developments in astronomical instrumentation; improvements in data analysis techniques; and an…
In the coming decades, research in extrasolar planets aims to advance two goals: 1) detecting and characterizing low-mass planets increasingly similar to the Earth, and 2) improving our understanding of planet formation. We present a new…
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…
The precise derivation of transit depths from transit light curves is a key component for measuring exoplanet transit spectra, and henceforth for the study of exoplanet atmospheres. However, it is still deeply affected by various kinds of…