Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics | Large Binocular Telescope | 2020 Mar 02
Astronomers succeeded in recording sunlight shining through the Earth’s atmosphere in a manner similar to the study of distant exoplanets. During the extraordinary occasion of a lunar eclipse, the Large Binocular Telescope observed the light that was filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere and reflected by the Moon in unique detail. In addition to oxygen and water, atomic spectral lines of sodium, calcium and potassium were detected in our atmosphere in this way first time.The Sun as seen from the Tycho crater on the Moon during a total lunar eclipse on
Earth. When the Sun sets behind the northern Pacific, its disk completely disappears
behind Earth. Credit: AIP/Strassmeier/Fohlmeister
When an exoplanet transits in front of its host star, astronomers may be able to record both the dimming of the starlight that the planet blocks and also the starlight that shines through the planet’s atmosphere. While it is only a tiny signal, it contains the imprint of the planet’s chemical and physical signature and provides the principal possibility to measure the planet’s atmospheric constituents. In astrophysics, this technique is called transmission spectroscopy, and is a relatively young technique booming since many exoplanet transits were detected from space. ...
The sunlight that passes through the Earth’s atmosphere before it reaches the Moon and back reflects to Earth is called the Earthshine. The Earth’s atmosphere contains many by-products of biological activity, such as oxygen and ozone in association with water vapor, methane and carbon dioxide. These biogenic molecules present attractive narrow molecular bands at optical and near infrared wavelengths for detection in atmospheres of other planets. Taking the Earth as the prototype of a habitable planet, Earthshine observations provide the possibility to verify biogenic and related chemical elemental presence with the same techniques that otherwise are being used for observing stars with super Jupiter planets. Earthshine is thus an ideal test case for future exo-Earth detections with the new generation of extremely large telescopes. ...
High-Resolution Spectroscopy and Spectropolarimetry of the Total Lunar Eclipse January 2019 ~ K. G. Strassmeier et al
- Astronomy & Astrophysics DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201936091
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2002.08690 > 20 Feb 2020