How do we measure what exoplanet atmospheres are made of? As we move closer to observations of Earth-like atmospheres, exoplanet researcher Ryan MacDonald (Cambridge, UK) explains how astronomers retrieve the atmospheric properties of exoplanets.
-----Further information and links-----
*Recent reviews of exoplanet atmosphere research:
- General overview: https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1169
- Observations: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/683115
- Chemistry: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06092
*An excellent textbook on exoplanet atmosphere theory:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9225.html
*The first exoplanet atmosphere retrieval paper (Madhusudhan & Seager, 2009):
https://arxiv.org/abs/0910.1347
*'The presence of methane in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet' (Swain et al. 2008):
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7185/full/nature06823.html
*'HD 209458b in New Light' (Ryan's MNRAS paper):
[Contains an overview of exoplanet atmospheric retrieval for transmission spectra]
-Online version:
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/469/2/1979/3852416/HD-209458b-in-new-light-evidence-of-nitrogen
-Open access pdf (pre-typset author's manuscript):
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.01113.pdf
*The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST):
https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
*Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3):
http://www.stsci.edu/hst/wfc3
The schematic diagrams, cross section plots, and transmission spectra illustrations were produced by Ryan MacDonald, making use of the POSEIDON radiative transfer and retrieval algorithm.
