News

Two people installing air quality monitoring equipment on building rooftop.

Kingston Air Quality Initiative at Bard College Reports After Five Years of Monitoring

The Center for the Environment Sciences and Humanities at Bard College (CESH) is pleased to announce the findings of the KAQI after five consecutive years of research and data collection.

Person installing monitoring equipment on building rooftop.

Bard College Launches New Online Platform in Partnership with JustAir to Give Public Access to Real-Time Hudson Valley Air Quality Information

CESH has partnered with JustAir, an environmental justice tech start-up, to create a platform that gives direct access to real-time, validated air quality data in an accessible format.

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Bard College Celebrates Student Achievements at Undergraduate Awards Ceremony

The annual ceremony is a celebration of the incredible talent and dedication showcased by Bard students, as well as the unwavering support and guidance from esteemed faculty and staff at the College.

Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing News by Date

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September 2022

09-18-2022

Bard Physics Professor Clara Sousa-Silva Coauthors New Research on How the James Webb Space Telescope Impacts Our Understanding of Planetary Atmospheres

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Clara Sousa-Silva has published a new study, “The impending opacity challenge in exoplanet atmospheric characterization,” in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy. The paper is led by graduate student Prajwal Niraula (MIT), and coauthored by Julien de Wit (MIT), Iouli E Gordon (Harvard), Robert Hargreaves (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), Clara Sousa-Silva (Bard), and Roman Kochanov (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian). Their research suggests that the current tools astronomers use to analyze data received from space telescopes may not be precise enough to accurately decode the unprecedented clarity of light-signals captured through next-generation observatories, including the extremely powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched by NASA in December 2021.

“We find ourselves in the extraordinary situation where the incredible engineering of JWST has resulted in the data collected from distant planets outcompeting our ability to interpret what we are seeing,” says Sousa-Silva.

Astronomers rely on ‘opacity models,’ which interpret how matter interacts with light, to describe and predict the physical properties of astronomical objects. This new study used existing opacity models to analyze spectral data collected from JWST and to look at the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres—predicting atmospheric temperature, pressure, and elemental composition. The researchers warned that for each possible atmospheric signal from an exoplanet, multiple interpretations could be made with current models and fundamental molecular inputs. The imprecision from these models means that data from an alien atmosphere could be misinterpreted. The implications of such misinterpretations include our understanding of whether an exoplanet could support life or not.

“There is a scientifically significant difference between a compound like water being present at 5 percent versus 25 percent, which current models cannot differentiate,” says study coauthor Julien de Wit.

The authors show how the limits of our knowledge on light–matter interactions (i.e. opacity models) will affect our exploration of exoplanetary atmospheres. “Accounting for these limits will prevent biased claims,” they write. “Guided improvements in opacity models, their standardization and dissemination will ensure maximum return on investment from the next-generation observatories, including the James Webb Space Telescope.” Their findings call for an investment in improved laboratory and theoretical data on atmospheric molecules, and development of more precise opacity models.