Spectral signatures from super-Earths, warm and hot-Neptunes

Abstract

ESA's and NASA's planet characterization missions, will allow us to explore the diversity of planets around stars of different spectral type, and will expand the existing field of comparative planetology beyond our Solar System. In particular, terrestrial planets greater than one Earth mass are not represented in our Solar System, but may occur in others (Beaulieu et al., 2006; Rivera et al. 2005). The next generation of space telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope (2013), will have the capability of acquiring transmission and emission spectra in the infrared of these extrasolar worlds. Further into the future, the direct imaging of exoplanets, both in the optical and infrared, will extend our understanding to extrasolar bodies orbiting few Astronomical Units from their parent star and expand our knowledge to smaller-size objects.

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