Exoplanets and their Atmospheres

The detection of exoplanets has become routine in modern astronomy. We are currently in the age

of characterisation, where astronomers routinely measure spectra from the atmospheres of

exoplanets as a probe of their chemistry. From the atmospheric chemistry, one hopes to decipher

the formation history and/or habitability conditions of an exoplanet.

In the colloquium, I will review three important sub-topics: “reading” spectra of exoplanetary

atmospheres, constraining the properties of clouds/hazes using reflected light and understanding how

rocky exoplanets produce their atmospheres via geochemical outgassing. For the first sub-topic, I

will discuss recent work done on the hot Jupiter WASP-39b and focus on key limitations. For the

second sub-topic, I will demonstrate that the shape of reflected light phase curves encode important

information on the properties of clouds/hazes. For the third sub-topic, I will discuss how the

atmospheres of rocky exoplanets are probably sourced by geochemical outgassing. In the exoplanet

population, there are probably examples of “hybrid atmospheres” that are produced by rocky mantles

outgassing into primordial hydrogen-helium envelopes. The next step of understanding requires

merging knowledge from astrophysics and the geosciences. I will highlight our long-term vision for

geoastronomy in the coming decade.

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