Planetary Spectrum Generator: An accurate online radiative transfer suite for atmospheres, comets, small bodies and exoplanets

By Geronimo L. Villanueva, Michael D. Smith, S. Protopapa, S. Faggi, A. Mandell. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 2018

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We have developed an online radiative-transfer suite ( https://psg.gsfc.nasa.gov ) applicable to a broad range of planetary objects (e.g., planets, moons, comets, asteroids, TNOs, KBOs, exoplanets). The Planetary Spectrum Generator (PSG) can synthesize planetary spectra (atmospheres and surfaces) for a broad range of wavelengths (UV/Vis/near-IR/IR/far-IR/THz/sub-mm/Radio) from any observatory (e.g., JWST, ALMA, Keck, SOFIA), any orbiter (e.g., ExoMars, Juno), or any lander (e.g., MSL). This is achieved by combining several state-of-the-art radiative transfer models, spectroscopic databases and planetary databases (i.e., climatological and orbital). PSG has a 3D (three-dimensional) orbital calculator for most bodies in the solar system, and all confirmed exoplanets, while the radiative-transfer models can ingest billions of spectral signatures for hundreds of species from several spectroscopic repositories. It integrates the latest radiative-transfer and scattering methods in order to compute high resolution spectra via line-by-line calculations, and utilizes the efficient correlated-k method at moderate resolutions, while for computing cometary spectra, PSG handles non-LTE and LTE excitation processes. PSG includes a realistic noise calculator that integrates several telescope/instrument configurations (e.g., interferometry, coronagraphs) and detector technologies (e.g., CCD, heterodyne detectors, bolometers). Such an integration of advanced spectroscopic methods into an online tool can greatly serve the planetary community, ultimately enabling the retrieval of planetary parameters from remote sensing data, efficient mission planning strategies, interpretation of current and future planetary data, calibration of spectroscopic data, and development of new instrument/spacecraft concepts.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Atmospheric Science, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/96eabe728af6484e9951042d6463558c9ee6c92c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Aerospace Engineering

1. Jon Fortney

In Atmospheric Science

1. I. Gordon
2. V. Tyuterev
3. R. Kochanov
4. M. Marley
5. Michaël Rey
6. Jon Fortney
7. L. Rothman
8. A. Nikitin

In Spectroscopy

1. I. Gordon
2. V. Tyuterev
3. R. Kochanov
4. M. Marley
5. Michaël Rey
6. Jon Fortney
7. L. Rothman
8. A. Nikitin

Citations in the corpus

• An Accurate, Extensive, and Practical Line List of Methane for the HITEMP Database (2020, methodology): “…(Olsen et al. 2019; Hargreaves et al. 2019) and are regularly used in radiative transfer codes such as LBLRTM (Clough et al. 2005), NEMESIS (Irwin et al. 2008), the Reference Forward Model (Dudhia 2017), RADIS (Pannier & Laux 2019) and the Planetary Spectrum Generator (Villanueva et al. 2018).”
• Exoplanet Reflected-light Spectroscopy with PICASO (2019, methodology): “An additional branch of models, used for Solar System/Earth science also exists to compute reflected light from planetary atmospheres (NEMESIS, Irwin et al. (2008); DISORT, Stamnes et al. (1988); PSG, Villanueva et al. (2018)).”