Reflection Spectra for Cool Giant Planets with H2O Absorption Models

Supplementary material for the paper 'Exploring H2O Prominence in Reflection Spectra of Cool Giant Planets' published in ApJ 858, 69 (2018). Ryan J. MacDonald from Cornell University created this repository containing 65,520 model reflection spectra. The grid explores the influence of metallicity, gravity, effective temperature, and sedimentation efficiency on H2O absorption signatures in giant planet atmospheres.

Use Cases

• Modeling H2O absorption signatures in exoplanet atmospheres based on described physical parameters.
• Visualizing the prominence of water absorption across a parameter space using the included animations.
• Comparing theoretical albedo spectra with and without H2O absorption for cool giant planets.
• Studying the influence of metallicity, gravity, temperature, and cloud sedimentation on reflection spectra.

Strengths

• Contains 65,520 model spectra, providing a large grid for parameter exploration.
• Explicitly explores four key physical parameters: metallicity (1-100x solar), gravity (1-100 m/s²), effective temperature (150-400 K), and sedimentation efficiency (1-10).
• Includes a Python script for accessing, plotting, and exporting the spectra from the HDF5 database.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified beyond the described 2019 version.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.

Provenance

Source

Ryan J. MacDonald, Cornell University

Collection Method

Model spectra generated using the PICASO albedo code, as described in the associated ApJ paper.