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Langeveld, Adam B., Bartholomew, Amy
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Spring 2024
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2024-05
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Sheneman_Honors.pdf
Adobe PDF, 4.19 MB
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Observing transiting exoplanets with ground-based telescopes and high-resolution spectrographs
enables the resolution of individual absorption lines in the exoplanet transmission
spectra. However, observing from the ground inherently introduces telluric contamination:
spectral contamination from absorption due to molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere.
We take high-resolution observations of a transiting exoplanet around a bright
A-type star as a case study and use synthetic telluric molecfit models to remove contamination
from water and oxygen molecules in Earth’s atmosphere. The quality of the
telluric corrections was statistically assessed for several different telluric regions based on
absorption depth and molecular absorption species. We find that corrections for shallow
telluric lines are more robust than deeper telluric lines, though both depend similarly
on airmass. Corrections for different molecular bands varied by region. Some regions
demonstrate a higher dependency on airmass, potentially due to the wavelength, depth,
or quantity of telluric lines. Finally, we determine that the most accurate corrections
are performed at observations with airmass under 1.07 corresponding to a zenith angle
of approximately 20.84 degrees. Whilst this is a somewhat limited airmass range, these
results highlight the need for improving telluric models for future searches of water and
oxygen features in Earth-like exoplanet transmission spectra with 30m-class telescopes.
These results may assist in optimizing observations for retrieving and preserving more
data in an exoplanet transmission spectrum, especially when absorption features from
the same molecules–and potential biosignatures–in Earth-like atmospheres fall in these
highly contaminated regions. Key Words: astronomy; astrobiology; exoplanets; atmosphere; spectroscopy; telluric
contamination; telluric corrections
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