JWST collects vast amounts of information about exoplanets light years away from Earth. Back home, the measured optical constants of laboratory aerosols are critically input parameters in models to interpret the observational results.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank N. Batalha (NASA Ames Research Center) and P. Gao (Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, USA) for providing the data for the figure.
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exoclime/LX-MIE: https://github.com/exoclime/LX-MIE
Optical Constants database (OCdb): https://ocdb.smce.nasa.gov/
PAH IR spectra database (PAHdb): https://www.astrochemistry.org/pahdb/
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Sciamma-O’Brien, E., Drant, T. & Wogan, N. In an exoplanet atmosphere far, far away. Nat Rev Chem 8, 157–158 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-024-00586-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-024-00586-2