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How is accurate spectral analysis of a planets atmosphere achieved, bearing in mind that its host star's resultant light emission is not a full spectrum?

George
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user21951
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    This is a how long is a piece of string question. There is no answer that can be given within the terms specified by the question. – ProfRob Dec 06 '17 at 13:38
  • And this is cross posted https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/372928/spectroscopy-of-exoplanets – J. Chomel Dec 06 '17 at 15:26
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    I think the answer right now is somewhere in between not good to barely seeing anything at all. With luck, the James Webb Space Telescope will be a 10 fold, maybe 100 fold increase in this specific area of research. I agree that precise answers are hard to give for "how accurate" questions, but I think asking for general answers on accuracy should be accepted and not discouraged. This would be a better question after James Webb starts to produce data though. – userLTK Dec 06 '17 at 16:37
  • I agree with userLTK: At the moment there is no accurate spectral analysis of planetary atmospheres. Surely not to the level where we can unambigously identify molecules & atoms. Only in a few lucky cases there were strong indicators of water & other things. – AtmosphericPrisonEscape Dec 06 '17 at 18:05
  • JWST is expected to do that. here is an example paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.05528 perhaps a big advantage JWST will have is that it can zoom in on a star system, and occlude the star itself using it's selective light filter apparatus. – bandybabboon Dec 07 '17 at 22:03

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