Related papers: Spectral signatures from the habitable zone
Investigating the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets is key to performing comparative planetology between these worlds and the terrestrial planets that reside in the inner solar system. Terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres exhibit weak signals,…
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…
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet,…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…
We present theoretical predictions for photometric and spectroscopic signatures of rings around transiting extrasolar planets. On the basis of a general formulation for the transiting signature in the stellar light curve and the velocity…
Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets is a tool to characterize rocky planets and explore their habitability. Using the Earth itself as a proxy, we model the atmospheric cross section as a function of wavelength, and show the effect of…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to revolutionize our understanding of Jovian worlds over the coming decade. However, as we push towards characterizing cooler, smaller, "terrestrial-like" planets, dedicated next-generation…
The search for biosignatures necessitates developing our understanding of life under different conditions. If life can influence the climate evolution of its planet then understanding the behaviour of life-climate feedbacks under extreme…
The future extremely large telescopes (ELTs) are expected to be powerful tools to probe the atmospheres of extrasolar planets using high-dispersion spectroscopy, with the potential to detect molecular oxygen in Earth-like planets transiting…
Proxima Centauri b provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand the evolution and nature of terrestrial planets orbiting M dwarfs. Although Proxima Cen b orbits within its star's habitable zone, multiple plausible evolutionary paths…
The detection of exolife is one of the goals of very ambitious future space missions that aim to take direct images of Earth-like planets. While associations of simple molecules present in the planet's atmosphere ($O_2$, $O_3$, $CO_2$ etc.)…
A long-term goal of exoplanet studies is the identification and detection of biosignature gases. Beyond the most discussed biosignature gas O$_2$, only a handful of gases have been considered in detail. Here we evaluate phosphine (PH$_3$).…
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…
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 -…
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…
The radial velocity signature of stellar noise is small, around the meter-per-second, but already too much for the detection of Earth mass planets in habitable zones. In this paper, we address the important role played by observational…
The chemical makeup of Earth's atmosphere during the Archean (4 Ga-2.5 Ga) and Proterozoic eon (2.5 Ga-0.5 Ga) contrast considerably with the present-day: the Archean was rich in carbon dioxide and methane and the Proterozoic had…
Understanding a planet's atmosphere is a necessary condition for understanding not only the planet itself, but also its formation, structure, evolution, and habitability, This puts a premium on obtaining spectra, and developing credible…
Future direct imaging space telescopes, such as NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), will be the first capable of both detecting and characterizing terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zones (HZ) of nearby Sun-like stars. Since…