Dim Prospects for Transmission Spectra of Ocean Earths Around M Stars

Understand

The search for water-rich Earth-sized exoplanets around low-mass stars is rapidly gaining attention because they represent the best opportunity to characterize habitable planets in the near future.

• Understanding the atmospheres of these planets and determining the optimal strategy for characterizing them through transmission spectroscopy with our upcoming instrumentation is essential in order to constrain their environments.
• For this study, we present simulated transmission spectra of tidally locked Earth-sized ocean-covered planets around late-M to mid-K stellar spectral types, utilizing GCM modeling results previously published by Kopparapu et al.
• (2017) as inputs for our radiative transfer calculations performed using NASA's Planetary Spectrum Generator (psg.gsfc.nasa.gov; Villanueva et al.