Sophia Vaughan

This plot shows the different masks we tried where the red line shows the orbit of Proxima b. We could change this mask but first we have to think about if it affects any of the other science HARMONI wants to do. 7/7

We are looking at the reflection spectrum of the planet. So it contains both the reflected stellar spectral lines and those from absorption in the planet's atmosphere. With current data reduction techniques we cannot just use the stars lines to detect the planet. 6/N

HARMONI has a focal plane mask which protects it from its equivalent of ‘staring at the sun’. In the current design, the mask will cover the planet. Our work shows that by making the mask smaller or offsetting the current one, we can detect Proxima b's atmosphere! 5/N

In a picture of the Proxima Centauri system taken with HARMONI, the star and planet will be on different pixels. This means we can isolate the spectrum of the planet and use it to see what kind of atmosphere it has! Although this is still quite hard, it can be done but… 4/N

HARMONI is one of the first light instruments for the ELT which means it will start observing in the 2030s. It will take special pictures of the night’s sky where every pixel in the image is a spectrum rather than a single colour. 3/N

Proxima b is our galactic next door neighbour and a potentially Earth-like exoplanet. To measure its atmosphere and discover if this world is like our own, we're going to need some next generation instruments like HARMONI on the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). 2/N

So you want to measure the atmosphere of Proxima b? A🧵on how to do this with HARMONI@ELT in the next decade.
You can also check out my paper showing these results 🔭 🪐: arxiv.org/abs/2401.09589
Or this summary phys.org/news/2024-01... 1/N