Institution: The Ohio State University
Title: Reaching for Distant Worlds: Exoplanet Atmospheres at High Spectral Resolution
Abstract: The study of exoplanets has rapidly advanced over the last three decades, with thousands of planets now known. With newly-developed techniques and instrumentation, we can now perform more detailed characterization of a select few planets. The best cases are the ultra hot Jupiters (UHJs), short-period, massive planets which host the most extreme planetary environments, with atmospheric temperatures in excess of 2000 K. I will present PIRANGA, a survey of the population of UHJ atmospheres using the PEPSI spectrograph on the Large Binocular Telescope. With the high spectral resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra produced by this facility, we can detect individual atomic and molecular species in the planetary atmospheres. Furthermore, we are using these detections to constrain the structure, dynamics, and time variability of the atmospheres, including the presence of temperature inversions across the population of hot Jupiters. All together, these observations provide an unprecedented view of these distant worlds.
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