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Multi-wavelength transit and secondary-eclipse light-curve observations are some of the most powerful techniques to probe the thermo-chemical properties of exoplanets. Although the large planet-to-star brightness contrast and few available spectral bands produce data with low signal-to-noise ratios, a Bayesian approach can robustly reveal what constraints we can set, without over-interpreting the data. Here I performed an end-to-end analysis of transiting exoplanet data. I analyzed space-telescope data for three planets to characterize their atmospheres and refine their orbits, investigated correlated noise estimators, and contributed to the development of the respective data-analysis pipelines. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the Photometry for Orbits, Eclipses and Transits (POET) pipeline to model Spitzer Space Telescope light curves, applied to secondary-eclipse observations of the Jupiter-sized planets WASP-8b and TrES-1. Chapter 4 studies commonly used correlated-noise estimators for exoplanet light-curve modeling, time averaging, residual permutations, and wavelet likelihood, and assesses their applicability and limitations to estimate parameters uncertainties. Chapter 5 describes the open-source Bayesian Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (BART) code to characterize exoplanet atmospheres. BART combines a thermochemical-equilibrium code, a one-dimensional line-by-line radiative-transfer code, and the Multi-core Markov-chain Monte Carlo statistical module to constrains the atmospheric temperature and chemical-abundance profiles of exoplanets. I applied the BART code to the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope transit observations of the Neptune-sized planet HAT-P-11b. BART finds an atmosphere enhanced in heavy elements, constraining the water abundance to ~100 times that of the solar abundance.
We explore how well James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spectra will likely constrain bulk atmospheric properties of transiting exoplanets. We start by modeling the atmospheres of archetypal hot Jupiter, warm Neptune, warm sub-Neptune, and cool super-E
Dust clouds are ubiquitous in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters and affect their observable properties. The alignment of dust grains in the clouds and resulting dust polarization is a promising method to study magnetic fields of exoplanets. Moreover, t
Radiative-transfer (RT) is a fundamental part of modelling exoplanet atmospheres with general circulation models (GCMs). An accurate RT scheme is required for estimates of the atmospheric energy transport and for gaining physical insight from model s
Habitability is a measure of an environments potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planets success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex set of intera
Many stars, active galactic nuclei, accretion discs etc. are affected by the stochastic variations of temperature, turbulent gas motions, magnetic fields, number densities of atoms and dust grains. These stochastic variations influence on the extinct