Yesterday was an incredible day for publications in my research groups. One big surprise to me was that my own first, first-authored paper made its way onto arxiv last night! I’m so excited to share this work with all of you. #AAS235 arxiv.org/pdf/2001.01338…
One of the most well known potentially habitable exoplanets, TRAPPIST-1e, has been the subject of transit modeling simulations with JWST for the last few years. Thanks to the findings of these works, it was determined that only CO2 may be detected if the planet is “Earth-like”. 
Because of this reality, I wanted to know what it would take for an observatory to expand their detections beyond CO2 to include signatures of habitability/life such as CH4, H2O, O2, O3, and N2.
With the approach of the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey, I put 3/4 missions to the test to see how they would weigh against each other based on wavelength range, aperture size, and proposed sensitivity. (Sorry LYNX, you have an awesome team but I can’t use x-rays for this 😭)
In addition, I made sure to accurately include the presence of clouds - inevitable to exist in a temperate atmosphere - by using a 3D Global Circulation Model (GCM) (LMD-G) to correctly place them where they would exist.
Inputs from the photochemical model ATMOS (Arney et al. 2017) & simulations with the radiative transfer suite PSG (Villanueva et al. 2018) were also included.
The results were very shocking to me. The presence of clouds heavily impacts the detectability of most absorption features, making all features beyond CO2 incredibly difficult to detect, even with the proposed designs of future space-based telescopes.
So, how will we learn more about Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around M-dwarfs? I’m still trying to truly figure that out. For now, we must use synergies between ground- & space-based telescopes to increase the feasibility of detections.
The cross-correlation technique used by ground-based observatories is something that I’m very excited to see be put to use in the near future. Hopefully, we discover more than we can expect to find.
I’m proud of this work and happy to be moving forward for many reasons. 1) My degree is in biology. I spent my life dreaming about doing astrophysics while having no opportunities to get involved. I went to an extremely small university with no astro courses or clubs.
I almost gave up on this project - actually, I did give up, many times. I have been terrified of sharing the results due to the controversies behind them. I have also been asked many times, “this is weird, why would you compare direct imaging missions?”
At the end of the day, these results are important and needed to be determined. I am very thankful for my co-authors who motivated me to press forward on a project that once brought me a lot of grief. I share this because I want others to see that this is normal and common.
I thought for so long that I was the only one struggling like this, and that my lack-of-a-physics-background was what was preventing me from being able to finish. I now understand that research is challenging no matter who you are or what you do. It’s okay to feel this way.
Beyond the results in the paper, I learned more about myself and research science than I ever thought possible. I’m taking these lessons and applying them to my new ideas, and it has been an awesome journey to be a part of.
Thank you all for reading! Send me your questions 🙂
Thank you all for reading! Send me your questions 🙂
