›SEEC Symposium 2019 - Rocky Exoplanets in the Era of JWST

We have firmly entered the era of exoplanet characterization. Observations examining the composition and thermal structure of the terminator and day-side regions of the atmospheres of tidally locked warm gas-rich planets is now routine with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and thermal imaging of young warm Jupiter-mass planets from ground-based telescopes is providing compositional constraints as well. However, the characterization of the environments of rocky exoplanets has only barely begun – apart from some intriguing initial measurements of the brightest hot super-Earth 55 Cnc e, we only have masses and radii for small planets, and attempts at atmospheric characterization have produced only featureless or ambiguous spectra.

With its large primary mirror and complement of IR instrumentation, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is poised to dramatically expand our view of the environments of rocky exoplanets. JWST will be further aided by the discovery of a new crop of small planets orbiting nearby low-mass stars and brown dwarfs from the TESS mission and ground-based surveys, enabling higher precision measurements over a wider population of potentially rocky worlds. With these exciting opportunities on the horizon, now is the time to improve our understanding of what information can be gleaned about rocky worlds from these future measurements, based on our understanding of the observations themselves as well as detailed modeling of the planetary environments that will be examined.

The Symposium will be hosted by the GSFC Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC) and co-supported by the University of Maryland Astronomy Department. The goal of this meeting is to bring together theorists and observers interested in rocky exoplanets from across the exoplanet community and related fields, to help us all prepare for the first light of the James Webb Space Telescope era by framing the key questions about these worlds and the exciting new observations that will help us characterize them. The workshop will include invited overview talks combined with short research presentations, as well as ample time for group discussion and collaborative work sessions. The website for Registration and Abstracts for combined poster+flash talks will open at the beginning of August. Attendance will be limited by space, so please check out the meeting's webpage and pre-register now. We will alert you when the full registration and abstract submission pages are available.