Scripts

This section contains some scripts that may be useful for your applications of the ThERESA code. They are not needed to run ThERESA.

synthlc

This script generates synthetic light curves, given a 3D description of an exoplanet atmosphere temperature structure (a GCM) and parameters for the planet, star, radiative transfer, and observation. Many of the parameters are similar to those used by ThERSA. Note that in order to run this code you need a 3D temperature structure in the right format and a set of opacities/CIAs for Tau-REx, which can be fetched from a number of locations (e.g., ExoTransmit, HITRAN/HITEMP). The tutorial (Getting Started) includes a script to fetch some of the ExoTransmit opacities.

To run synthlc, do the following:

cd scripts
./synthlc.py synthlc.cfg

If the configuration file is set up correctly, this will read the GCM temperature structure, calculate thermochemical equilibrium, run radiative transfer, and integrate over the planet at the observation times requested. It will produce time.txt, flux.txt, and ferr.txt, which can be used in ThERESA.

Options

  • planetname – Name of the simulated planet.

  • outdir – Where to store the output. Will be created if it does not exist.

  • ms – Stellar mass in solar masses.

  • rs – Stellar radius in solar radii.

  • ts – Stellar temperature [K].

  • ds – Distance to star [pc]. Has no effect at the moment.

  • zs – Stellar metallicity [dex].

  • mp – Planetary mass in Jupiter masses.

  • rp – Planetary radius in Jupiter radii.

  • ap – Planet semimajor axis [au].

  • bp – Planet impact parameter.

  • porb – Planet orbital period [days]

  • prot – Planet rotational period [days]

  • t0 – Planet time of transit [days]

  • ecc – Planet eccentricity.

  • inc – Planet inclination [deg].

  • atmtype – Same as ThERESA. See Configuration.

  • atmfile – Same as ThERESA. See Configuration.

  • mols – Same as ThERESA. See Configuration.

  • opacdir – Location of TauREx molecular opacities.

  • ciadir – Location of TauREx CIA opacities.

  • filtdir – Location of filter files.

  • filters – List of filter file names in filtdir.

  • phasestart – When to start the observation in orbital phase.

  • phaseend – When to end the observation in orbital phase.

  • dt – Length of one exposure or integration of the observation [s].

  • noise – List of star-normalized noise estimates for each filter.

  • necl – Number of stacked eclipses. Uncertainties scale as \(\sqrt{\textrm{necl}}\).

  • oom – Number of orders of magnitude of pressure change in the GCM.

  • surfp – Surface pressure of the GCM.

  • gcmfile – File describing GCM output.