Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

The first potentially habitable exoplanets will likely be discovered in the next two years, but they will be much fainter than their host stars, so these worlds will at first be studied indirectly. Fortunately, the existence of short-period giant planets allows us to test the observational and analytic techniques that we one day hope to use on habitable exoplanets. I will describe theoretical and observational studies of thermal and reflected light from unresolved planets. I will begin with some of the first observations of thermal phase variations in extrasolar planetary systems and what these tell us about the planets. I will then develop light curve inversion as a general technique to recover as much longitudinal information as possible given observations of these phase variations. Lastly, I will show how the multi-band brightness variations of an unresolved planet may be used to create a color map of the planet showing the relative positions of its continents and oceans.