Seminars

Astronomy seminar - Characterising the Atmospheres and Circumplanetary Environment of Exoplanets

Since the discovery of the first planet outside our solar-system almost 25 years ago, the field of exoplanet research has made a lot of progress. Not only has the number of known exoplanets increased to over 3000, the atmospheres for a number of exoplanets have been detected. These atmospheric studies have mainly been made for transiting planets. For these planets is not only possible to study their atmosphere in emission/reflection during the secondary eclipse and through their phase-curve, but also in transmission during the transit. I will show that ground-based telescopes can be used to reach the high precision required to detect the atmospheric signatures, while long-term monitoring with space-based telescopes allows us to start and probe dynamics in the atmospheres of alien worlds. Finally, I will show how we can use high-resolution spectroscopy to search for rings around exoplanets.