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Alien Earth: Glint observations of a remote planet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2011

Richard K. Barry  and
L. Drake Deming
Richard K. Barry
Affiliation:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD email: [email protected]
L. Drake Deming
Affiliation:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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We give a preliminary report on a multi-wavelength study of specular reflections from the oceans and clouds of Earth. We use space-borne observations from a distance sufficient to ensure that light rays reflected from all parts of Earth are closely parallel, as they will be when studying exoplanets. We find that the glint properties of Earth in this far-field vantage point are surprising - in the sense that some of the brightest reflections are not from conventional ocean-glints, but appear to arise from cirrus cloud crystals. The Earth observations discussed here were acquired with the High Resolution Instrument (HRI) - a 0.3 m f/35 telescope on the Deep Impact (DI) spacecraft during the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh) investigation.

Keywords

infrared: planetary systemsastrobiologyastrochemistryplanetary systemsEarth
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 6 , Symposium S276: The Astrophysics of Planetary Systems: Formation, Structure, and Dynamical Evolution , October 2010 , pp. 471 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2011

References

Barry, R. K., Lindler, D., Deming, L. D., A'Hearn, M. F., Ballard, S., Carcich, B., Charbonneau, D., Christiansen, J., Hewagama, T., McFadden, L., & Wellnitz, D. 2010, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010, 7731, 107Google Scholar