Icy Planets, Windswept Worlds: Into a New Era of Exoplanet Characterization with JWST

Abstract:
We stand at an incredible time in exoplanet science, about to characterize worlds outside the solar system in great detail. The exquisite capabilities of JWST will allow us to see the atmospheres of planets from super-Jupiters to sub-Neptunes to Earths. I will discuss two aspects of exoplanet atmosphere science as it stands in early 2023, on the cusp of this revolution. First, I’ll discuss our path to observing true Jupiter analogs, which takes us through observations of the coldest brown dwarfs and directly-imaged planets. Next, I’ll discuss how atmosphere loss may be sculpting the atmospheres of planets both large and small, with huge implications for the next five years of studying Earth-sized planets with JWST.