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Of the 342 planets discovered so far orbiting other stars, 58 transit the stellar disk, meaning that they can be detected by a periodic decrease in the starlight flux. The light from the star passes through the atmosphere of the planet, and in a few cases the basic atmospheric composition of the planet can be estimated. As we get closer to finding analogues of Earth, an important consideration toward the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres is what the transmission spectrum of our planet looks like. Here we report the optical and near-infrared transmission spectrum of the Earth, obtained during a lunar eclipse. Some biologically relevant atmospheric features that are weak in the reflected spectrum (such as ozone, molecular oxygen, water, carbon dioxide and methane) are much stronger in the transmission spectrum, and indeed stronger than predicted by modelling. We also find the fingerprints of the Earths ionosphere and of the major atmospheric constituent, diatomic nitrogen (N2), which are missing in the reflected spectrum.
With the rapid developments in the exoplanet field, more and more terrestrial exoplanets are being detected. Characterising their atmospheres using transit observations will become a key datum in the quest for detecting an Earth-like exoplanet. The a
Laser ranging measurements during the total lunar eclipse on 2010 December 21 verify previously suspected thermal lensing in the retroreflectors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts. Signal levels during the eclipse far exceeded those h
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earths atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet, will be the fi
The atmospheres of exoplanets are commonly studied by observing the transit of the planet passing in front of its parent star. The obscuration of part of the stellar disk during a transit will reveal aspects of its surface structure resulting from ge
Mostly multiband photometric transit observations have been used so far to retrieve broadband transmission spectra of transiting exoplanets in order to study their atmosphere. An alternative method has been proposed and has only been used once to rec