MSI Seminar

Breaking Through Exoplanetary Atmospheres

Mercedes López-Morales

CfA/Smithsonian

In the past two decades we have gone from only knowing�about the planets in our own Solar System to discovering thousands of planets orbiting around other stars. We have not only discovered that planets abound, but also that most planetary systems do not resemble our own. One of the next steps in the field of exoplanets is to study their atmosphere and answer questions such as: do the physical properties of gas giant exoplanets resemble those of the Solar System giants? Are there exoplanets with atmospheres similar to Earth? In this talk I will describe the state of the art techniques we are using and developing to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres, the main results so far, and our plan for the future.