imaging Archives

The reflectance spectra for each month of the baseline exoEarth simulation in comparison to months 12 and 96 of the 15 Gt eruption. Both plots show the same spectra but the upper panel is on a log scale and the lower panel is scaled linearly. -- astro-ph.IM

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

The Prospect of Detecting Volcanic Signatures on an ExoEarth Using Direct Imaging

by Keith CowingSeptember 30, 2023September 30, 2023

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided the first opportunity to study the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets and estimate their surface conditions.

A sample of scattered light images of exozodiacal dust disks including worst-case-scenario resonant structure used in this work. Each row represents a disk with 1, 10, or 100 zodis and includes a colorbar representing the contrast of 0, 30, 60, and 90 degree inclined disks. The blue dot represents an Earth-like planet at 1 AU away from the star, and the star is located in the center of the image. The structure appears less pronounced for the > 1 zodi cases because it accounts for a smaller percentage of the total surface brightness due to enhanced collisional destruction of grains in denser disks. The disks in this figure are shown after the dithering and Mie theory artifact mitigation steps. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Mitigating Worst-Case Exozodiacal Dust Structure In High-Contrast Images Of Earth-like Exoplanets

by Keith CowingSeptember 25, 2023September 25, 2023

Detecting Earth-like exoplanets in direct images of nearby Sun-like systems brings a unique set of challenges that must be addressed in the early phases of designing a space-based direct imaging […]

The relative fitting errors of the planet mass 𝜖𝑚 as a function of observing baseline and observational error. Different colors represent different 𝜖𝑚. Gray circles represent none detection of planet signals or the identified planet has large fitting errors of orbital period (i.e. 𝜖𝑃 > 0.1). The gray dashed lines represent the contours of different SNRs. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, SETI & Technosignatures, Status Report

The Possibility Of Detecting Our Solar System Through Astrometry

by Keith CowingSeptember 23, 2023September 23, 2023

Searching for exoplanets with different methods has always been the focus of astronomers over the past few years. Among multiple planet detection techniques, astrometry stands out for its capability to […]

Artist impression of an exoplanet system - ESA

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Detecting Molecules In Ariel Low Resolution Transmission Spectra

by Keith CowingSeptember 18, 2023October 16, 2024

The Ariel Space Mission aims to observe a diverse sample of exoplanet atmospheres across a wide wavelength range of 0.5 to 7.8 microns. The observations are organized into four Tiers, […]

Spectroscopic and broadband NIRCam F322W2 lightcurves of the transit and eclipse of WASP-80b. The raw spectroscopic transit (a) and eclipse (b) lightcurves after spectral binning (0.0146 µm bins) but without any temporal binning. The transit and eclipse’s second and third contact points are indicated with red lines above the plots. The broadband (2.420–4.025 µm) transit (c) and eclipse (d) lightcurves are shown in gray without error bars. The transit and eclipse’s second and third contact points are indicated with red vertical lines. Black points with 1σ error bars show temporally binned data with a cadence of 5 minutes; note that the error bars in panel c are smaller than the point size. BJDTDB is the date in the Barycentric Julian Date in the Barycentric Dynamical Time system. -- astro-ph.EP

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

Methane Throughout The Atmosphere Of The Warm Exoplanet WASP-80b

by Keith CowingSeptember 11, 2023September 11, 2023

The abundances of major carbon and oxygen bearing gases in the atmospheres of giant exoplanets provide insights into atmospheric chemistry and planet formation processes.

This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on science data. K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth. A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. Credits: Illustration: NASA, CSA, ESA, J. Olmsted (STScI), Science: N. Madhusudhan (Cambridge University)

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

Webb Discovers Methane, Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere of K2-18 b

by Keith CowingSeptember 11, 2023September 11, 2023

A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and […]

Schematic of the proposed UNDERGROUND instrument setup. A high-speed high-order loop corrects the atmosphere to maintain images with high Strehl ratios. A slow loop at 10 Hz creates a dark hole region where all starlight is removed. This dark hole is maintained at high speed by the wavefront sensor that is integrated into the coronagraph. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Proxima Centauri, Status Report

Visible Extreme Adaptive Optics On Extremely Large Telescopes: Towards Detecting Oxygen In Proxima Centauri b And Analog

by Keith CowingSeptember 6, 2023September 6, 2023

Looking to the future of exo-Earth imaging from the ground, core technology developments are required in visible extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) to enable the observation of atmospheric features such as […]

(a) Calibrated ALMA Band 7 (0.87 mm/343 GHz) image of Callisto’s leading hemisphere. (b) Result of subtracting a sample Lambertian disk from (a) to highlight difference in 𝑇𝑏 across the disk. In both images, the ellipse in the lower left corner represents the FWHM (full-width at half-maximum) of the synthesized ALMA beam. The latitude/longitude grid is spaced at 30◦ increments, and the 0◦ longitude line is marked with dashes. Callisto’s north pole is aligned with the image axis. Notably, the Valhalla impact crater appears slightly colder than other disk regions viewed at similar incident and emission angles. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Callisto, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Thermal Properties Of The Leading Hemisphere Of Callisto Inferred From ALMA Observations

by Keith CowingAugust 31, 2023August 30, 2023

We present a thermal observation of Callisto’s leading hemisphere obtained using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at 0.87 mm (343 GHz). The angular resolution achieved for this observation was […]

Variations of photometric flux (top panel), airmass (panel 2), Geocentric-to-stellar rest frame RV correction (panel 3) and peak SNR per velocity bin during the two simulated transits of the HD 189733 b analog. On panels 1 and 4, the two different transits are respectively shown as blue dots and pink crosses. The vertical gray band indicates the primary transit of the simulated planet. The horizontal gray dashed line on the bottom panel indicates the average value of the peak S/N for the observed spectra -- astro-ph.IM

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

ATMOSPHERIX: II- Characterising Exoplanet Atmospheres Through Transmission Spectroscopy With SPIRou

by Keith CowingAugust 31, 2023September 18, 2025

In a companion paper, we introduced a publicly-available pipeline to characterise exoplanet atmospheres through high-resolution spectroscopy.

𝐻-band (top) and 𝐾-band (bottom) spectra of 2M0437b. The dark blue points are the reduced spectrum produced by the OSIRIS pipeline, the dark blue line is the 21-point running median, the magenta curve is a model of the spectrum to further correct for telluric absorption using a spectrum of an A0 star, and the green points and line are the corrected spectrum and its 21-point running median. The grey line is a model transmission spectrum for the atmosphere over Maunakea for an airmass of 1.5 and water vapor column of 1.6 mm (courtsey Gemini Orbservatory, Lord 1992). The absorption functions of key molecules (H2O, CO, CH4, HCN) computed using the HITRAN database (Mikhailenko et al. 2005; Gordon et al. 2022) and normalized by the maximum for that molecule in each bandpass are plotted at the top (blue, black, red, and orange lines, respectively. The vertical dotted lines mark H Brackett lines and the Na I doublet, and spectral features of molecules of interest are labeled. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

CO, H2O, And CH4 In The Dusty Atmosphere Of A ≤5 Myr-old Exoplanet

by Keith CowingAugust 30, 2023August 30, 2023

Very young massive planets are sufficiently luminous by their internal heat of formation to permit detailed studies, including spectroscopy of their atmospheres with large telescopes at sufficient resolution (λ/Δλ≳1000) to […]

imaging

The Prospect of Detecting Volcanic Signatures on an ExoEarth Using Direct Imaging

Mitigating Worst-Case Exozodiacal Dust Structure In High-Contrast Images Of Earth-like Exoplanets

The Possibility Of Detecting Our Solar System Through Astrometry

Detecting Molecules In Ariel Low Resolution Transmission Spectra

Methane Throughout The Atmosphere Of The Warm Exoplanet WASP-80b

Webb Discovers Methane, Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere of K2-18 b

Visible Extreme Adaptive Optics On Extremely Large Telescopes: Towards Detecting Oxygen In Proxima Centauri b And Analog

Thermal Properties Of The Leading Hemisphere Of Callisto Inferred From ALMA Observations

ATMOSPHERIX: II- Characterising Exoplanet Atmospheres Through Transmission Spectroscopy With SPIRou

CO, H2O, And CH4 In The Dusty Atmosphere Of A ≤5 Myr-old Exoplanet

A Martian Horizon Last Monday Afternoon

Habitable-zone Earths At The Detection Frontier: Measured Completeness And False-alarm Rate Of A Transit Pipeline For The PLATO M-dwarf Sample

A Homogeneous Survey Of JWST MIRI Transmission Spectra Of 10 Exoplanets

Retrieving Ocean Glint Reflectance Signatures From Directly Imaged Earth-like Exoplanets

Analytical Platform (Microsampling, Catapulting, Trapping, and LIBS) for the Characterization of Discrete Domains in Samples of Astrochemical Interest