Date: Monday 25-Mar-2024
Time: 11:15 am - 12:15 pm
Location: ATL 1250 and Zoom (contact host Eliza Kempton for link)
Speaker: Jordan Stone (US Naval Research Laboratory)
Title: Massive improvements in atmospheric characterization with direct imaging in the ELT era
Abstract: Atmospheric characterization studies of directly imaged planets and brown dwarfs often (nearly always) result in maximum likelihood models for synthetic atmospheres that imply physically implausible (or impossible) bulk structure. These results underscore the challenges faced by models that must account for the many parameters necessary to represent thermal structure, chemistry, and clouds. When best fit atmosphere models require an impossible internal structure, there is a sense of unreliability touching the implied atmospheric parameters. This issue, now persisting in its second decade, continues to undercut confidence in detailed atmospheric characterization, leaving the community unable to generate the constraints necessary to better understand gas-giant atmospheric processes and planet formation. Happily, this problem should be largely or wholly alleviated as the detection space for direct imaging begins to overlap the parameter space of planets and brown dwarfs with dynamical mass measurements. I will emphasize the need for direct imaging thermal and mid-IR instrumentation on the ELTs to provide sensitivity to planets with measured masses, I will discuss LBTI/ALES efforts to observe wide-orbit gas giants with astrometric accelerations reported in the Hipparcos/Gaia catalog of accelerators.
If you have any questions, contact the PALS hosts: Jacob Kloos (small bodies) and Matt Nixon (exoplanets).
SPECIAL ACCOMMODATIONS:Special accommodations for individuals with disabilities can be made by calling (301) 405-3001. It would be appreciated if we are notified at least one week in advance.
