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  • 3 months ago
  

  ikenbot:

  How Scattered Light May Reveal Alien Planet Atmospheres

  Image: Extrasolar planet Upsilon Andromedae d lies in the habitable zone and if sufficiently large moons of Upsilon Andromedae d exist, they may be able to support liquid water, as the image shows.

  On the horizon of this hypothetical moon can be seen Upsilon Andromedae d, possibly a class II planet (Sudarsky classification): since it is too warm to form ammonia clouds this ones are made up of water vapor, white in colour instead of the caracteristic yellow-reddish clouds of Jupiter and Saturn. Credit: Lucianomendez

  The light scattered off distant worlds could help reveal details about their atmospheres that no other method could uncover, scientists find.

  Nearly all the information astronomers have of the atmospheres of alien planets or exoplanets comes from worlds whose orbits happen to be precisely aligned from our vantage point.

  Once per orbit, these exoplanets go in front of (transit) their host stars from our point of view, and the light from these stars passes through the atmospheres of these planets on its way to Earth.

  The molecules in these alien atmospheres absorb some of this starlight, resulting in patterns known as spectra that allow scientists to identify what they are.

  However, “we know of many other planets that do not transit their host stars, and we therefore know almost nothing about those atmospheres,” said astronomer Sloane Wiktorowicz at University of California, Santa Cruz. Indeed, “less than 10 percent of the known exoplanets have had their atmospheres detected. This is because planets are at least a thousand times fainter than their host stars.”

  Instead of looking at starlight that has passed through alien atmospheres on its way to Earth, Wiktorowicz and his colleagues aim to look for light that has scattered off alien atmospheres. This strategy should work equally well for exoplanets in both transiting and non-transiting orbits, “which will open up many previously unstudied planets for exploration,” he explained.

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