Toward Understanding the Physics and Chemistry of Worlds Beyond Our Solar System
Exoplanetary Science is a field that is still in its infancy, with the first planets detected beyond our Solar System just over 30 years ago. The first two decades in exoplanetary science has focused on planet detection with large-scale ground-based surveys and space-based facilities such as Kepler and TESS bringing the current exoplanet count to 6,000 planets. The past decade, however, has seen steady growth in observational and theoretical efforts aimed at understanding global-scale chemical, radiative, and dynamical processes shaping exoplanet atmospheres. Here I will describe my recent efforts to provide robust constraints on exoplanet atmospheric properties through a mixture of observational and theoretical efforts that leverage my expertise as a planetary scientist and astronomer. Such constraints are critical for refining our understanding of planetary atmosphere formation, evolution, as well as current dynamical and chemical processes. I will highlight recent results from exoplanet studies with Hubble and JWST that are bringing these distant worlds into focus. These studies are establishing a solid foundation on which to continue our pursuit of answering the questions “How did we get here?” and “Are we alone?”.
Bio: Nikole Lewis is an expert in the area of exoplanet characterization. She has successfully bridged the gap between theory and observation through her pioneering work with Spitzer, Hubble, and now JWST exoplanet observations and the development of associated modeling and analysis tools. Her current research includes measuring spectra of exoplanet atmospheres as well as the development of one-, two-, and three-dimensional atmospheric models. Before joining the faculty in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University, Lewis served as the JWST Project Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and was a Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lewis has lent her scientific expertise to projects that have resulted in more than 200 peer reviewed manuscripts and has successfully advised dozens of graduate and postdoctoral researchers.