Earth’s transmission spectrum from lunar eclipse observations

Enric Pallé (), María Rosa Zapatero Osorio, Rafael Barrena, Pilar Montañés-Rodríguez and Eduardo L. Martín
Additional contact information
Enric Pallé: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, E38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
María Rosa Zapatero Osorio: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, E38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Rafael Barrena: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, E38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Pilar Montañés-Rodríguez: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, E38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Eduardo L. Martín: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, E38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

Nature, 2009, vol. 459, issue 7248, 814-816

Abstract: Earth seen in a new light Part of the little we know about the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is gleaned from spectra obtained from starlight that has passed through the planetary atmosphere as it transits the stellar disk. As planet-finding techniques improve, the point where analogues of Earth are likely to be found is approaching. So what are we looking for? A good starting point for comparisons would be a transmission spectrum of our own planet. Now we have one, based on the characterization of sunlight reflected from the Moon towards the Earth during a lunar eclipse, a scenario that resembles the observing geometry of a planetary transit. This indirect method produces an optical and near-infrared transmission spectrum of the Earth. Some biologically relevant atmospheric features that are weak in reflected spectra are much stronger in the transmission spectrum, and stronger than predicted by modelling.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08050 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:459:y:2009:i:7248:d:10.1038_nature08050

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature08050

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().