Planetary Science Seminar
South Mudd 365
From cloudy to cloudless hot Jupiters
Vivien Parmentier,
Postdoctoral Sagan Fellow,
Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics ,
University of California Santa-Cruz,
Clouds seem ubiquitous in Hot Jupiters atmospheres. Different hints for clouds for different planets have been detected. In the transmission spectra, clouds seem to flatten the signal at large wavelength and provide a Rayleigh scattering signature at small wavelength. Clouds turn the thermal emission spectra into a blackbody shape, reducing our ability to detect molecular features. They lower the thermal flux emitted from the nightside of the planet and shape the albedo spectrum of the dayside of the planet. More recently, the presence of a shifted maximum in the Kepler light curve of a handful of has been interpreted as the signature of a partially cloudy dayside and points toward the presence of a transition between cloudy and cloudless planets.
Hot Jupiters are intrinsically 3D objects and global circulation models are necessary to understand the physical processes shaping the spatial distribution of clouds. This is fundamental to link observations that probe different regions of the planet. Using a grid of global circulation models, I investigate the expected thermal structure and 3D cloud coverage of hot Jupiters, its observational consequences and constrain the possible composition of those exotic clouds.
For more information, please contact Lu Pan by email at [email protected].
Event Series
Dix Planetary Science Seminar Series