Statistics – Applications
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21533902c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #339.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.443
Statistics
Applications
Scientific paper
The first potentially habitable exoplanets will likely be discovered in the following three years, but they will be much fainter than their host stars, so these worlds will at first be studied indirectly. Fortunately, the existence of short-period giant planets allows us to test the observational and analytic techniques that we one day hope to use on habitable exoplanets. In this talk, I describe theoretical and observational studies of thermal and reflected light from unresolved planets. I begin with some of the first observations of thermal phase variations in extrasolar planetary systems. The variations occur because as a planet orbits its host star, we see its brighter day-side near superior conjunction, and its night-side near inferior conjunction. I then develop light curve inversion as a general technique to recover as much longitudinal information as possible given observations of these phase variations. The first three applications of phase function mapping are then presented, as well as a more general toy model of energy transport that can be applied to planets on eccentric orbits, for which longitudinal mapping is not an option. Lastly, I use the first observations of daily brightness variations of Earth seen from a distant vantage point to develop a technique for analyzing broadband time-resolved observations of exoplanets. The brightness variations we observe are due to the planet's rotation and -as with phase variations- can be used to create a map of the planet, in this case showing the relative positions of Earth's continents and oceans.
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