Related papers: Plan 9: Detecting Atmospheric Deterrence Against I…
I review the major open science questions in exoplanet atmospheres. These are mainly focused in the areas of understanding atmospheric physics, the atmosphere as a window into other realms of planetary physics, and the atmosphere is a…
Whether there is a cosmic shoreline that divides terrestrial planets which have atmospheres from those that don't is one of the biggest open questions in exoplanet science. Most atmosphere searches have focused on terrestrial planets around…
Visible and near-infrared spectra of transiting hot Jupiter planets have recently been observed, revealing some of the atmospheric constituents of their atmospheres. In the near future, it is probable that primary and secondary eclipse…
Clouds are often considered a highly uncertain barrier for detecting biosignatures on exoplanets, especially given intuition gained from transit surveys. However, for direct imaging reflected light observations, clouds could increase the…
Exoplanetary science is on the verge of an unprecedented revolution. The thousands of exoplanets discovered over the past decade have most recently been supplemented by discoveries of potentially habitable planets around nearby low-mass…
The near-term capability to characterize terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres may bring us closer to discovering alien life through atmospheric data. However, remotely detectable candidate biosignature gases are subject to false positive…
At the dawn of the first discovery of exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars in the mid-1990s, few believed that observations of exoplanet atmospheres would ever be possible. After the 2002 Hubble Space Telescope detection of a transiting…
Observations of exoplanet atmospheres have shown that aerosols, like in the Solar System, are common across a variety of temperatures and planet types. The formation and distribution of these aerosols are inextricably intertwined with the…
A number of transiting, potentially habitable Earth-sized exoplanets have recently been detected around several nearby M dwarf stars. These worlds represent important targets for atmospheric characterization for the upcoming NASA James Webb…
What makes the study of exoplanetary atmospheres so hard is the extraction of its tiny signal from observations, usually dominated by telluric absorption, stellar spectrum and instrumental noise. The High Resolution Spectroscopy has emerged…
We study the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere to derive detectable features in low resolution of different global geochemical cycles on exoplanets - using the sulphur cycle as our example. We derive low resolution detectable features for…
It is possible to learn a great deal about exoplanet atmospheres even when we cannot spatially resolve the planets from their host stars. In this chapter, we overview the basic techniques used to characterize transiting exoplanets -…
Thermochemical equilibrium and kinetic calculations are used to model sulfur and phosphorus chemistry in giant planets, brown dwarfs, and extrasolar giant planets (EGPs). The chemical behavior of individual S- and P-bearing gases and…
Atmospheric pollutants such as CFCs and NO$_{2}$ have been proposed as potential remotely detectable atmospheric technosignature gases. Here we investigate the potential for artificial greenhouse gases including CF$_{4}$, C$_{2}$F$_{6}$,…
Warm rocky exoplanets within the habitable zone of Sun-like stars are favoured targets for current and future missions. Theory indicates these planets could be wet at formation and remain habitable long enough for life to develop. In this…
A space telescope capable of high-contrast imaging has been recognized as the avenue toward finding terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars and characterizing their potential habitability. It is thus essential to quantify the…
A small admixture of dark matter gravitationally bound to the proto-Solar gas cloud could be adiabatically contracted into Earth-crossing orbits with a local density comparable to (or even exceeding) the Galactic halo density. We show that…
Methane has been proposed as an exoplanet biosignature. Imminent observations with the James Webb Space Telescope may enable methane detections on potentially habitable exoplanets, so it is essential to assess in what planetary contexts…
Many planetary parameters impact the climate state of Earth-like exoplanets and could vary significantly from those on Earth. However, some of these parameters may be impossible to observe, causing ambiguity in determining exoplanet climate…
Here we review how environmental context can be used to interpret whether O2 is a biosignature in extrasolar planetary observations. This paper builds on the overview of current biosignature research discussed in Schwieterman et al. (2017),…