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 stars.
State of the art spectral retrieval models of exoplanet atmospheres assume constant chemical profiles with altitude.
Planned astronomical observatories of the 2020s will be capable of obtaining reflected light photometry and spectroscopy of cool extrasolar giant planets.
L-type and T-type dwarfs span the boundaries between main-sequence stars, brown dwarfs, and planetary-mass objects.
We report the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) discovery of three terrestrial-sized planets transiting L 98-59 (TOI-175, TIC 307210830) -- a bright M dwarf at a distance of 10.6 pc.
How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does it need to be inside the temperate zone?
We report improved masses, radii, and densities for four planets in two bright M-dwarf systems, K2-3 and GJ3470, derived from a combination of new radial velocity and transit observations. Supplementing K2 photometry with follow-up Spitzer transit observations refined the transit ephemerides of K2-3 b, c, and d by over a factor of 10.
Transit spectroscopy of terrestrial planets around nearby M dwarfs is a primary goal of space missions in coming decades. 3-D climate modeling has shown that slow-synchronous rotating terrestrial planets may develop thick clouds at the substellar point, increasing the albedo.
By generalizing the theory of convection to any type of thermal and compositional source terms (diabatic processes), we show that thermohaline convection in Earth oceans, fingering convection in stellar atmospheres, and moist convection in Earth atmosphere are deriving from the same general diabatic convective instability.
Directly-imaged planetary-mass companions offer unique opportunities in atmospheric studies of exoplanets. They share characteristics of both brown dwarfs and transiting exoplanets, therefore, are critical for connecting atmospheric characterizations for these objects.
We present significant differences in the simulated atmospheric flow for warm, tidally-locked small Neptunes and super Earths (based on a nominal GJ 1214b) when solving the simplified, and commonly used, primitive dynamical equations or the full Navier-Stokes equations.
Every school kid knows that Earth has a magnetic field -- it's what makes compasses align north-south and lets us navigate the oceans. It also protects the atmosphere, and thus life, from the Sun's powerful wind.
The search for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars and the evaluation of their occurrence rate is a major topic of research for the exoplanetary community.
The Mid-Infrared instrument (MIRI) on board the James Webb Space Telescope will perform the first ever characterization of young giant exoplanets observed by direct imaging in the 5-28 microns spectral range.
An accurate estimate of the inner edge of the habitable zone is critical for determining which exoplanets are potentially habitable and for designing future telescopes to observe them.
Exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval refers to the inference of atmospheric properties of an exoplanet given an observed spectrum.
Carbon-enriched rocky exoplanets have been proposed around dwarf stars as well as around binary stars, white dwarfs and pulsars. However, the mineralogical make up of such planets is poorly constrained.
A new instrument to search for potentially habitable/inhabited planets has started operation at the Subaru Telescope. This instrument, IRD (InfraRed Doppler), will look for habitable planets around red dwarf stars.
The spectrum of an exoplanet reveals the physical, chemical, and biological processes that have shaped its history and govern its future. However, observations of exoplanet spectra are complicated by the overwhelming glare of their host stars.
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution.