Dr Ryan MacDonald

If you want know all things #HabitableWorldsObservatory then follow @drjovian.bsky.social for the next two days as she posts from the #HWO25 meeting in Washington DC.
Thanks Jo for keeping us posted ☺️

Wow! I wonder if astronomers using AI to 'assist' their coding also have the same overall *slowdown* found by the study below?

👇🔭

Thanks in advance for live-posting! 👏

Seems I'm a trusted news source for astronomy! 🔭

I'd encourage other professional astronomers to fill in the short official Bluesky form to apply for verification:
bsky.social/about/blog/0...

Thank you @distantworlds.space and @drjovian.bsky.social for bsky covering the conference.

Cubillos: after Hubble, we have no new UV missions until HWO in the 2040s...

A white paper will appear next week for a high-resolution UV to near-IR instrument proposal for HWO.

#AllTheWavelengths

Cubillos: we can see metal lines from escaping upper atmosphere using near-UV observations (especially from Hubble).

#AllTheWavelengths

Cubillos: but JWST primarily operates at infrared wavelengths that probe the lower atmosphere. To explore the upper atmosphere, we need shorter wavelength observations (especially in the UV).

#AllTheWavelengths

Cubillos: JWST has observed (or will observe) 181 exoplanets in its first 4 years of operations.

#Exoplanets
#AllTheWavelengths

Cubillos: exoplanet atmospheres provide a powerful tool to understand planetary physics.

#AllTheWavelengths

Last talk of the conference!

Patricio Ernesto Cubillos (INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino): Upper-Atmosphere Exoplanet Constraints from Ultraviolet Transmission Observations.

#Exoplanets
#AllTheWavelengths

Pezzella: focusing on CS, a molecule expected to be important for sulphur chemistry in hot giant exoplanet atmospheres.

#AllTheWavelengths

Pezzella: molecular collisions matter in non-local thermal equilibrium conditions.

#AllTheWavelengths

Marco Pezzella (Università G. Annunzio Chieti-Pescar): NRMolCol: Inelastic Scattering Data for (exo)Planetary Atmospheres.

#Exoplanets
#AllTheWavelengths

Rianco-Silva: tentatively detecting 8 lines of C3 in VLT-ESPRESSO observations of Titan (work in prep., stay tuned).

#AllTheWavelengths

Rianco-Silva: 100 new CH4 lines discovered in the visible wavelength spectrum of Titan.

#AllTheWavelengths

Rianco-Silva: Titan's visible spectrum contains CH4 lines that are not well characterised, due to the low wavelength cutoff for CH4 line lists.

#AllTheWavelengths

Rianco-Silva: Titan's atmosphere provides a window into probiotic chemistry.

Near-infrared observations of Titan have mainly been used; can we use visible wavelength high-resolution spectra to search for molecules like C3?

#AllTheWavelengths

Rafael Rianco-Silva (Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaco / UCL): A Study of Very High-Resolution Visible Spectra of Titan: Line Characterisation in Visible CH4 and the Search for C3.

#AllTheWavelengths

Smola: in trying to fit the potential energy of methanol, we can exploit symmetry to make the problem tractable.

#AllTheWavelengths

Smola: methanol is a quite complex molecule, with many degrees of freedom.

#AllTheWavelengths

Smola: methanol is known as a 'molecular weed', due to its forest of lines in the interstellar medium.

#AllTheWavelengths

Oleksiy Smola (UCL): Towards a Spectroscopic Potential Energy Surface of Methanol.

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson concludes with a summary of challenges for VUV laboratory cross section measurements and a future outlook.

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson: for CH4, the branching ratios into different byproducts of photolysis are crucial to get the UV cross section right.

This matters for Titan, and was a big success in understanding hydrocarbon chain formation.

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson: VUV lab measurements of cross sections can make a huge difference. Highlights SH and NH2, which were off by 2 orders of magnitude in the Leiden database vs experiment.

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson: so how do we measure VUV cross sections in the laboratory?

We use the Beer-Lambert law, which is one of the oldest physical laws still in regular use today (~ 1700s).

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson: the Leiden VUV cross sections database contains photodissociation and photoionisation cross sections for many asyrophysically relevant molecules.

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson offers a primer on the processes contributing to UV molecular cross sections.

#AllTheWavelengths

Hróðmarsson has a strong meme game this morning.

#AllTheWavelengths