Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Participants
- Preface
- Extrasolar planets: Past, present, and future
- The quest for very low-mass planets
- Extrasolar planets: A galactic perspective
- The Kepler Mission: Design, expected science results, opportunities to participate
- Observations of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets
- Planetary migration
- Observational constraints on dust disk lifetimes: Implications for planet formation
- The evolution of gas in disks
- Planet formation
- Core accretion—gas capture model for gas giant planet formation
- Gravitational instabilities in protoplanetary disks
- Conference summary: The quest for new worlds
Observations of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Participants
- Preface
- Extrasolar planets: Past, present, and future
- The quest for very low-mass planets
- Extrasolar planets: A galactic perspective
- The Kepler Mission: Design, expected science results, opportunities to participate
- Observations of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets
- Planetary migration
- Observational constraints on dust disk lifetimes: Implications for planet formation
- The evolution of gas in disks
- Planet formation
- Core accretion—gas capture model for gas giant planet formation
- Gravitational instabilities in protoplanetary disks
- Conference summary: The quest for new worlds
Summary
The extrasolar planets known to date have masses and orbital periods spanning a large range. Those for which we have definite knowledge about physical composition have much more restricted properties: they are either transiting planets with near-Jovian masses and orbital periods of a few days, or (as in a couple of recent discoveries) they are distant low-mass companions to objects that are themselves low-mass and young. Here we will concentrate on the former group of objects, and try to summarize what is known and conjectured concerning their atmospheres based on observations of their transits. By way of motivation and illustration of the ultimate possibilities available to transit observations, we begin by discussing recent observations of the transit of Venus in June 2004.
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- Chapter
- Information
- A Decade of Extrasolar Planets around Normal StarsProceedings of the Space Telescope Science Institute Symposium, held in Baltimore, Maryland May 2–5, 2005, pp. 50 - 65Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008