CPS News Publications
- Dr Lewis Dartnell Review Paper: Ionizing Radiation and Life
- My Tourist Guide to the Solar System by Dr Lewis Dartnell
- JGR paper for Dr Gerald Roberts: Possible evidence of palaeomarsquakes...
- Titan's Internal Structure - Dr Dominic Fortes
- Selection of JUICE mission to Jupiter and Ganymede by ESA
- 5yr UKSA Fellowship for Dr Pete Grindrod
- Mars rover: Nasa's Curiosity makes first test drive
- The search for life within our Solar System and beyond...
- The Sky at Night: Curiosity at Mars
- CPS Research Fellows give invited lectures at the University of St Andrews
- The latest science highlights from EPSC 2012, Madrid, 23-28 Sep
- "Dry" Gale Crater set for summer heat wave?
- Planet Earth Online features CPS astrobiology work in Iceland, led by Dr Claire Cousins
- Prof. Ian Crawford receives STFC award to identify source localities of lunar meteorites
- "Scientific Preparations for Lunar Exploration" - Special Issue of Planetary and Space Science
- ESA selects instruments to be flown on its icy moons mission
- Planetary Geology: An Introduction
- The Planets have arrived in London! EPSC 2013 at UCL, 8-13 September
- Congratulations to Dr Pete Grindrod and Dr Dominic Fortes on their recent Lectureship appointments
- EPSC2013 features on UCL web front page!
- Iron in the Earth’s core weakens before melting
- APEX meetings starting this week 17 Oct
- Insights from landslides on Mars
- Saturn moon Hyperion charging is a Cassini Top 10 discovery of 2014!
- Twinkle: A UK-led, fast-track space mission to study exoplanet atmospheres
- Venus is slowly losing its atmosphere
- Prof. Crawford Leverhulme award
- Pluto and Charon - A Planetary Waltz, in celebration of NASA's New Horizon Mission
- Prof. Andrew Coates: There is still lots more solar system exploration to do...
- Dr. Geraint Jones: Pluto’s moons in sharper focus
- ARIEL mission to reveal 'Brave New Worlds' among exoplanets
- Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure launches new era of planetary collaboration in Europe
- Professor Hilary Downes elected to the Presidency of the Mineralogical Society
- First detection of gases in super-Earth atmosphere
- Professor Ian Crawford elected Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society
- The intellectual and social benefits of astrobiology
- World’s oldest fossils unearthed
- Guest crater on the Moon
- Size matters in the detection of exoplanet atmospheres
- Cassini’s legacy and a final farewell
- ERC Starting Grant awarded to Dr Ingo Waldmann
- ARIEL selected as ESA’s next medium-class science mission
- RAS Fowler Award in Geophysics to Dr Ingo Waldmann

Size matters in the detection of exoplanet atmospheres
26 September 2017
A group-analysis of 30 exoplanets orbiting distant stars suggests that size, not mass, is a key factor in whether a planet’s atmosphere can be detected according to a UCL-led team of European researchers.

The largest population-study of exoplanets to date successfully detected atmospheres around 16 ‘hot Jupiters’, and found that water vapour was present in every case.
The findings, presented last week at the European Planetary Science Congress, have important implications for the comparison and classification of diverse exoplanets.
“More than 3,000 exoplanets have been discovered but, so far, we’ve studied their atmospheres largely on an individual, case-by-case basis. Here, we’ve developed tools to assess the significance of atmospheric detections in catalogues of exoplanets,” said Angelos Tsiaras, the lead author of the study and PhD student in UCL Physics & Astronomy and the Centre for Planetary Sciences at UCL/Birkbeck (CPS). “This kind of consistent study is essential for understanding the global population and potential classifications of these foreign worlds.”
The researchers used archive data from the ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to retrieve spectral profiles of 30 exoplanets and analyse them for the characteristic fingerprints of gases that might be present. About half had strongly detectable atmospheres.
Results suggest that while atmospheres are most likely to be detected around planets with a large radius, the planet’s mass does not appear to be an important factor. This indicates that a planet’s gravitational pull only has a minor effect on its atmospheric evolution.
Most of the atmospheres detected show evidence for clouds. However, the two hottest planets, where temperatures exceed 1,700 degrees Celsius, appear to have clear skies, at least at high altitudes. Results for these two planets indicate that titanium oxide and vanadium oxide are present in addition to the water vapour features found in all 16 of the atmospheres analysed successfully.
“To understand planets and planet formation we need to look at many planets: at UCL we are implementing statistical tools and models to handle the analysis and interpretation of large sample of planetary atmospheres. 30 planets is just the start,” said Dr Ingo Waldmann (UCL Physics & Astronomy and the CPS), a co-author of the study.
“30 exoplanet atmospheres is a great step forward compared to the handful of planets observed years ago, but not yet big-data. We are working at launching dedicated space missions in the next decade to bring this number up to hundreds or even thousands,” commented Professor Giovanna Tinetti (UCL Physics & Astronomy and the CPS).
Links
- Professor Giovanna Tinetti's academic profile
- Dr Ingo Waldmann's academic profile
- UCL Physics & Astronomy
- European Planetary Science Congress
Image
- An artist's impression of hot Jupiter exoplanets (credit: alexaldo)
Media contact
Bex Caygill
Tel: +44 (0)20 3108 3846
Email: r.caygill [at] ucl.ac.uk
Page last modified on 26 sep 17 16:33 by Joanna Fabbri