TODAY @ 1:30
The University of Western Ontario
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM
Date: Monday, 23rd April 2012
Time: 1:30 p.m.
Location: Physics & Astronomy Seminar Room 22
Dr. Stanimir Metchev
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Stony Brook University, New York
“Exoplanetary Worlds: Atmospheres, Architectures, and Evolution”
ABSTRACT
The detection of global weather phenomena in irradiated extrasolar hot Jupiter planets has provided tremendous insights into their atmospheric structure. Non-irradiated substellar atmospheres probe weather in an entirely different regime, where global atmospheric flows result primarily from a combination of rapid rotation and internal convection—e.g., as in the atmosphere of Jupiter—rather than from external forcing. Isolated brown dwarfs are ideal targets for such investigations because they possess planet-like atmospheric dynamics, yet have greater intrinsic brightnesses and lack nearby bright stars to contaminate observations. I will overview recent results on non-irradiated brown dwarf and planetary atmospheres, and will present the prospects for the direct characterization of extrasolar planets with the coming generation of extreme-contrast imaging telescopes.