Notice: This is an archived and unmaintained page. For current information, please browse astrobiology.nasa.gov.
NAI
Login
NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

nai
You are here: Home » Annual Science Reports » Team » Report

2009 Annual Science Report

VPL at University of Washington Reporting  |  JUL 2008 – AUG 2009

Astronomical Observations of Planetary Atmospheres and Exoplanets

Project Summary

This task focuses on what we can learn about planets in our Solar System and exoplanets using astronomical remote-sensing techniques. These techniques include radial velocity, secondary eclipse and, for planets in our own Solar System, direct spectroscopy. These astronomical observations both tell us more about the universe, and allow us to test retrieval and observing techniques that may one day be used on extrasolar terrestrial planets.

4 Institutions
3 Teams
7 Publications
0 Field Sites
Field Sites

Project Progress

This year we continued astronomical observations of planets in our own Solar System (Neptune and Venus) and also observed and characterized extrasolar planets. These studies allow us to not only improve our understanding of these astronomical bodies, but in most cases also serve as explorations and tests of retrieval and observing techniques that may one day be used on extrasolar terrestrial planets.

Solar System Planets

We published a comparison of existing water vapor line lists for modeling the Venus atmosphere. This systematic test allowed us to determine which line list best simulated near-infrared spectroscopic observations of the Venus lower atmosphere, and led to the realization that previous line lists had resulted in an overestimated of the amount of water vapor in the lower atmosphere (Bailey, 2009). This result therefore also has consequences for our understanding of the efficiency of the Venus greenhouse mechanism.

We also completed and published ground-based observations of the Venus lower atmosphere (Bailey et al., 2008a) and the O2 airglow from the Venus mesosphere. We used the vibration-rotation structure of the 1.27um O2 singlet-delta emission to determine atmospheric temperatures at the emitting levels. A comparison of these temperatures with data obtained from the Venus Express spacecraft showed good agreement within measurement errors (Bailey et al., 2008b)

We also published detection and quantification of new hydrocarbons in Neptune’s atmosphere, as seen in spectra taken using the Spitzer Space telescope (Meadows et al., 2008). The new hydrocarbons help to constrain models of organic chemistry in the Neptune atmosphere.

Extrasolar Planets

We published the first spectrum of an extrasolar Jovian planet to show a definitive detection of water vapor in the atmosphere be spectrally–resolving the shape of the 6.3um water band in Spitzer observations of HD189733b taken during secondary eclipse (Grillmair et al., 2008).

Other work on exoplanets included detection of a new planet via radial velocity measurements (Bailey et al., 2009) and a white paper on the need for more research in extrasolar planet molecular spectroscopy, in which several of our team members participated (Swain et al., 2009).

Publications

  • Bailey, J. (2009). A comparison of water vapor line parameters for modeling the Venus deep atmosphere. Icarus, 201(2), 444–453. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2009.01.013

  • Bailey, J., Butler, R. P., Tinney, C. G., Jones, H. R. A., O’Toole, S., Carter, B. D., & Marcy, G. W. (2008). A JUPITER-LIKE PLANET ORBITING THE NEARBY M DWARF GJ 832. The Astrophysical Journal, 690(1), 743–747. doi:10.1088/0004-637x/690/1/743

  • Bailey, J., Chamberlain, S., Crisp, D., & Meadows, V. S. (2008). Near infrared imaging spectroscopy of Venus with the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Planetary and Space Science, 56(10), 1385–1390. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2008.03.006

  • Bailey, J., Meadows, V., Chamberlain, S., & Crisp, D. (2008). The temperature of the Venus mesosphere from O2 (aΔg1) airglow observations. Icarus, 197(1), 247–259. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2008.04.007

  • Grillmair, C. J., Burrows, A., Charbonneau, D., Armus, L., Stauffer, J., Meadows, V., … Levine, D. (2008). Strong water absorption in the dayside emission spectrum of the planet HD 189733b. Nature, 456(7223), 767–769. doi:10.1038/nature07574

  • Meadows, V. S., Orton, G., Line, M., Liang, M-C., Yung, Y. L., Van Cleve, J., & Burgdorf, M. J. (2008). First Spitzer observations of Neptune: Detection of new hydrocarbons. Icarus, 197(2), 585–589. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2008.05.023

  • Swain, M., Deming, D., Grillmair, C., Marley, M., Fortney, J., Yung, Y., Griffith, C., Orton, G., Deroo, P., Tinetti, G., Vasisht, G., Henning, T. & Bouwman, J.  (2009).  Exoplanet Molecular Spectroscopy.  Astro2010: The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, 291.  doi:2009astro2010S.291S
  • PROJECT INVESTIGATORS:
    Victoria Meadows Victoria Meadows
    Project Investigator
    Jeremy Bailey Jeremy Bailey
    Co-Investigator
    Carl Grillmair
    Co-Investigator
  • RELATED OBJECTIVES:
    Objective 1.2
    Indirect and direct astronomical observations of extrasolar habitable planets.

    Objective 2.2
    Outer Solar System exploration