Atmospheres, Climate, Weather Archives

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These Away Teams Are Building The Largest Knowledge Graph Of Life On Earth

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023September 18, 2025

Editor’s note: As we search for life on other worlds via orbital and surface surveys, it is useful to use Earth and its diverse biota on land, sea, and air, […]

Internal ocean probabilities of the investigated exoplanets. The colour bar depicts the probability of each planet having a liquid water reservoir in its interior. Red colours imply a high probability, while planets with dark blue circles are less likely to have internal oceans. The HZ, shown as a green band only for illustrative purposes, was calculated based on stellar parameters from theoretical stellar evolution models. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Proxima Centauri, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Water Content Of Rocky Exoplanets In The Habitable Zone

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 4, 2023

In this study we investigated the interiors of rocky exoplanets in order to identify those that may have large quantities of water.

Upper panel; Left: CCF map for Obs1. Dashed lines and labels: Positions of cuts though the data, shown on the right. Right: Cuts through the data, for different semi-amplitudes (a,b,c), and for the rest velocity of maximum CCF contrast (d); Black dots: data for simulated data-set Obs1, Red line: best fitting Saltire model. Green dashed line: mark of the input semi-amplitude of the EBLM companion. Lower panel; Left: Residual CCF map after removing the Saltire model. Dashed lines and labels: Positions of cuts though the residuals, shown on the right. Right: Cuts through the residuals at similar position as above. Error bars represent uncertainties, derived from 2D Saltire fit to the the CCF map. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Saltire — A Model To Measure Dynamical Masses For High-contrast Binaries And Exoplanets With High-resolution Spectroscopy

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 4, 2023

High-resolution cross-correlation methods are widely used to discover and to characterise atomic and molecular species in exoplanet atmospheres. The characteristic cross-correlation signal is typically represented as a function of the […]

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report

Dynamically Coupled Kinetic Chemistry In Brown Dwarf Atmospheres — II. Cloud And Chemistry Connections In Directly Imaged Sub-Jupiter Exoplanets

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 4, 2023

With JWST slated to gain high fidelity time dependent data on brown dwarf atmospheres, it is highly anticipated to do the same for directly imaged, sub-Jupiter exoplanets.

100 TO These plots show the range of outcomes for oxygen accumulation (top row, green) and water retention (bottom row, blue) for the set of simulations with 100 TO initial water content on each of the planets. The distributions for the water behavior can be found in Figure 6, bottom row. Given 100 TO, all three planets are likely to retain water past 1 Gyr, making observations of water relatively likely. In addition, thousands of bars of oxygen may be produced for each planet in this scenario. Details on planet b’s behavior, similar to Figure 3, are given in Section 4. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Atmospheric Escape From Three Terrestrial Planets In The L 98-59 System

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 3, 2023

A critically important process affecting the climate evolution and potential habitability of an exoplanet is atmospheric escape, in which high-energy radiation from a star drives the escape of hydrogen atoms […]

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Monitoring Ice World Surfaces From Orbit: Antarctic Iceberg Sails Away

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 3, 2023

Editor’s note: Prime targets for Astrobiology missions in the coming decades include ice-covered ocean worlds in the outer solar system such as Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, Callisto, Mimas, Titan and others. […]

Schematic contours of H, C, and N speciation determined by Raman spectroscopy in basaltic glasses synthesized in piston-cylinder experiments at 1–2 GPa and 1,400°C–1,600°C, shown as a function of fO2 (relative to the IW buffer) and H content (as equivalent H2O, wt. %). Raman and FTIR measurements are from Hirschmann (2012), Armstrong et al. (2015), Dalou et al. (2019, 2022), and Grewal et al. (2020). Blank areas represent conditions at which literature data are currently lacking. This figure demonstrates that H, C, and N on their own may be present as multiple species at a given fO2 or water content, and that they combine to form different molecules in natural and synthetic glasses. fO2 of Earth and Mars formation are indicated. Sulfur speciation is not shown because the effect of H on S speciation has not yet been determined at fO2 relevant to magma ocean conditions. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

The Distribution Of Volatile Elements During Rocky Planet Formation

by Keith CowingDecember 3, 2023December 2, 2023

Core segregation and atmosphere formation are two of the major processes that redistribute the volatile elements-hydrogen (H), carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and sulfur (S)-in and around rocky planets during their […]

The occurrence rates of hot sub-Neptunes with time, from the young TESS FGK stars (15–450 Myr) from Fernandes & Hardegree-Ullman et al. (2023), to the intermediate age (600–800 Myr) K2 Praesepe GKM sample studied here, to the field K2 GKM stars (3–9 Gyr). The age uncertainties capture the width of the age distributions in each case. The shaded regions indicate the putative timescales for the photoevaporation (

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Scaling K2 VII: Evidence For A High Occurrence Rate Of Hot Sub-Neptunes At Intermediate Ages

by Keith CowingDecember 3, 2023December 2, 2023

The NASA K2 mission obtained high precision time-series photometry for four young clusters, including the near-twin 600-800 Myr-old Praesepe and Hyades clusters.

Stellar versus planetary rest frame for a hot, i.e. short-orbit planet (red arrow) and a temperate planet (green arrow) in the habitable zone around the host star. For the temperate planet, the planetary and stellar (black arrow) rest frames are much closer together and changes in stellar activity may distort the planetary atmospheric signal (figure adapted from Bourrier et al, 2020). -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Ground-breaking Exoplanet Science With The ANDES Spectrograph At The ELT

by Keith CowingDecember 2, 2023December 2, 2023

In the past decade the study of exoplanet atmospheres at high-spectral resolution, via transmission/emission spectroscopy and cross-correlation techniques for atomic/molecular mapping, has become a powerful and consolidated methodology.

Comparison of spectra for WISE 0855 from Gemini/GNIRS (Skemer et al. 2016; Morley et al. 2018; Miles et al. 2020) and JWST/NIRSpec (this work). -- astro-ph.SR

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Brown Dwarfs, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

JWST/NIRSpec Observations Of The Coldest Known Brown Dwarf

by Keith CowingNovember 30, 2023November 30, 2023

We present 1-5um spectroscopy of the coldest known brown dwarf, WISE J085510.83-071442.5 (WISE 0855), performed with the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather

These Away Teams Are Building The Largest Knowledge Graph Of Life On Earth

Water Content Of Rocky Exoplanets In The Habitable Zone

Saltire — A Model To Measure Dynamical Masses For High-contrast Binaries And Exoplanets With High-resolution Spectroscopy

Dynamically Coupled Kinetic Chemistry In Brown Dwarf Atmospheres — II. Cloud And Chemistry Connections In Directly Imaged Sub-Jupiter Exoplanets

Atmospheric Escape From Three Terrestrial Planets In The L 98-59 System

Monitoring Ice World Surfaces From Orbit: Antarctic Iceberg Sails Away

The Distribution Of Volatile Elements During Rocky Planet Formation

Scaling K2 VII: Evidence For A High Occurrence Rate Of Hot Sub-Neptunes At Intermediate Ages

Ground-breaking Exoplanet Science With The ANDES Spectrograph At The ELT

JWST/NIRSpec Observations Of The Coldest Known Brown Dwarf

Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 9 November 2026: Lake Untersee Basecamp Update

Astrochemistry: Hubble and JWST Observe Star Formation in The Carina Nebula

Mapping the Historical Roots of Astrobiology: A Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) Analysis

The Agentic Observer Hackathon: Autonomous Decision-making in Simulated Astronomical Surveys

Tracking The Evolution of sub-Neptunes. I. Gyrochronology of Planet Hosting Stars