Abstract Details

Name: MANIKA SINGLA
Affiliation: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF ASTROPHYSICS
Conference ID: ASI2020_87
Title : Characterization of the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets
Authors and Co-Authors : Manika Singla, Sujan Sengupta
Abstract Type : Oral
Abstract Category : Stars, ISM and Galaxy
Abstract : Over 3000 exoplanets have been detected till date but we know very less about their atmospheres in detail. In order to understand the ambient environment of terrestrial planets, we model the planetary atmosphere with molecular composition equivalent to Earth’s atmospheric abundances and Earth’s atmospheric Temperature-Pressure profiles. We obtain the reflected spectra for modern Earth like planets and Prebiotic Earth like planets orbiting around F,G,K,M spectral types of stars. We use Exo-Transmit package to obtain the opacity data. Using these data as inputs we solve the Radiative Transfer equations to generate the reflected spectra for modern Earth like planets and prebiotic Earth like planets orbiting around F,G,K,M spectral types of stars. We also define a habitability range by considering the greenhouse effect and the albedo for which the reflected flux does not change much. We compare our model reflected spectra with the observed spectra of modern Earth and with existing model spectra for prebiotic Earth. Hence we calculated the geometric albedo of modern as well as prebiotic Earth as an example of habitable exoplanets. Here, I shall discuss our theoretical models and show that the prebiotic Earth scattered slightly more starlight as compared to the modern Earth when the effect of condensate cloud is neglected.