DIX Planetary Science Seminar

Studying the atmospheres of directly imaged exoplanets and brown dwarfs presents a number of challenges, chief of which is the presence of thick clouds. Clouds introduce a variety of obstacles from both theoretical and observational perspectives, but also present opportunities for new insights into the dynamics and chemistry of substellar atmospheres. I will review different approaches to studying the atmospheres of cloudy brown dwarfs and giant exoplanets, and discuss recent efforts to unpick the information encoded in their emission spectra using the Brewster retrieval code.