Abstract Details

Name: Soumya Sengupta
Affiliation: IIA, Bengaluru
Conference ID: ASI2019_228
Title : Model transmission and Reflected Spectra of Exoplanets
Authors and Co-Authors : Soumya Sengupta and Sujan Sengupta (Indian institute of Astrophysics)
Abstract Type : Oral
Abstract Category : Stars, ISM and Galaxy
Abstract : Since the discovery of the first Extra-solar planet around a solar type star 51 Pegasi (Mayor & Queloz,1995) astronomers started systematic search by using ground and space bound telescope and till date about 3800 exoplanets of a wide variety are discovered. Once the physical parameters such as radius, surface gravity, mean density, albedo, equilibrium temperature are available the focus is now shifted to probe their atmosphere. Modelling the transmission spectra of planets would provide valuable information on the molecular abundances and the ambient environment of the planets when observed transmission spectra will be available by the forthcoming next generation ground as well as space-bound telescopes. In the present work, we have modelled the temperature-pressure (T-P) profiles for exoplanets with different equilibrium temperature T_eq and surface gravity by considering different molecular abundances (e.g. H2O, CH4, NH3 etc.). Using these T-P profiles we have calculated the transmission as well as the reflected spectra of exoplanets with a wide range of T_eq. For this purpose, we have used the Exo-Transmit code (Kempton et al. 2016) and the radiative transfer code (Sengupta et al. 2010). The modelled spectra are compared with the available observed spectra taken by different telescopes such as Spitzer, HST etc. Our model transmission and reflected spectra for various type of exoplanets will be useful to interpret data to be obtained by the latest and upcoming missions like TESS, Twinkle, ARIEL, JWST etc.