Arthur Adams
Research
Click on these planet icons to learn more about my projects in exoplanet atmospheric characterization, theory, and more. Or visit my Projects page!
My research primarily centers on learning more about the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System. As a postdoc at the University of Michigan I am involved in a variety of research projects, from the "retrieval" of the atmospheres of large, widely-orbiting planets (or are they stars?),
to understanding how much we can learn about the faces ("maps") of planets that get eclipsed by their host stars as they orbit — especially if we don't know how quickly or at what angle they spin!
My PhD work centered on using planetary phases — the sides they reveal as they orbit around their host stars — to learn more about their atmospheres. Their thermal profile translates to these phases and tells us about how these planets respond to the heating from the stars.
This response depends on the atmosphere itself, like what it's composed of and the pressure and thickness, but globally the rotation and orbit are going to have primary effects on how the starlight gets distributed over the planet. We can learn the shape and size of the orbit, but the rotation is still a major challenge.
Right now we're mostly limited to observing these phases for giant planets on super-short orbits, where we can both detect the phases and get a full orbit in just a couple of days. The interplay between their days (set by the rotation) and their years (set by the orbits) is especially important for these planets.