Related papers: Resolving the Surfaces of Extrasolar Planets With …
Transmission spectroscopy can be used to constrain the properties of exoplanetary atmospheres. During a transit, the light blocked from the atmosphere of the planet leaves an imprint in the light coming from the star. This has been shown…
Only one exoplanet has so far been mapped in both longitude and latitude, but the James Webb Space Telescope should provide mapping-quality data for dozens of exoplanets. The thermal phase mapping problem has previously been solved…
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…
Of the three space telescopes launched so far to survey transiting extrasolar planets, CoRoT is unique in that it was the only one with spectral resolution, allowing for an extraordinary opportunity to study the reflective properties of…
Although atmospheric transmission spectroscopy of HD209458b with the Hubble Space Telescope has been very successful, attempts to detect its atmospheric absorption features using ground-based telescopes have so far been fruitless. Here we…
The measurement of the light scattered from extrasolar planets informs atmospheric and formation models. With the discovery of many hot Jupiter planets orbiting nearby stars, this motivates the development of robust methods of…
Secondary eclipse observations are a powerful way to investigate whether or not a rocky exoplanet hosts an atmosphere, as an atmospheric presence would transport heat to the nightside and render the dayside colder than anticipated. The…
We investigate the effect of planetary rotation on the transit spectrum of an extrasolar giant planet. During ingress and egress, absorption features arising from the planet's atmosphere are Doppler shifted by of order the planet's…
We report the spectroscopic detection of mid-infrared emission from the transiting exoplanet HD 209458b. Using archive data taken with the Spitzer/IRS instrument, we have determined the spectrum of HD 209458b between 7.46 and 15.25 microns.…
Eclipse mapping uses the shape of the eclipse of an exoplanet to measure its two-dimensional structure. Light curves are mostly composed of longitudinal information, with the latitudinal information only contained in the brief ingress and…
High precision lightcurves combined with eclipse mapping techniques can reveal the horizontal and vertical structure of a planet's thermal emission and the dynamics of hot Jupiters. Someday, they even may reveal the surface maps of rocky…
Resolving spatially-varying exoplanet features from single-point light curves is essential for determining whether Earth-like worlds harbor geological features and/or climate systems that influence habitability. To evaluate the feasibility…
Observations of the phase curves and secondary eclipses of extrasolar planets provide a window on the composition and thermal structure of the planetary atmospheres. For example, the photometric observations of secondary eclipses lead to…
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…
We present SPIDERMAN, a fast code for calculating exoplanet phase curves and secondary eclipses with arbitrary surface brightness distributions in two dimensions. Using a geometrical algorithm, the code solves exactly the area of sections…
We analyzed the combined near-infrared spectrum of a star-planet system with thermal emission atmospheric models, based on the composition and physical parameters of the system. The main objective of this work is to obtain the inclination…
Secondary eclipses are a powerful tool to measure directly the thermal emission from extrasolar planets, and to constrain their type and physical parameters. We started a project to obtain reliable broad-band measurements of the thermal…
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…
We present near infrared high-precision photometry for eight transiting hot Jupiters observed during their predicted secondary eclipses. Our observations were carried out using the staring mode of the WIRCam instrument on the…
Determining wavelength-dependent exoplanet radii measurements is an excellent way to probe the composition of exoplanet atmospheres. In light of this, Borsa et al. (2016) sought to develop a technique to obtain such measurements by…