Abstract
The field of exoplanetary science is a rapidly expanding one; since the first confirmation of planets in other solar systems in 1992, over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets have been discovered. One aspect of the field which is currently of intense interest— and gaining new data thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) —is the study of exoplanetary atmospheres. Using Python, the HITRAN (High-Resolution Transmission) atmospheric database, and the associated HAPI (HITRAN Application Programming Interface) module, a program was created to simulate various atmospheric and planetary conditions. The parameters of the model include surface gravity, atmospheric composition, height, and density, and the temperature and distance of the exoplanet’s star. Using the relaxation and finite difference methods, the non-scattering radiative transfer equation for temperature is solved for each timestep, and in turn used to calculate various quantities; pressure, optical depth, absorption coefficient, flux, and intensity. Temperature-pressure profiles can also be created for each atmosphere. The program was used to generate a hot, opaque, Venus-like atmosphere. This and future synthetic atmospheres may make it easier to interpret the information gleaned from real exoplanet atmospheres, especially with the increased detection capacity of JWST.