Week 8: (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`) Pale Brown Dot ?

Welcome back folks. Aside from going bankrupt this week, I mostly completed my poster for the Senior Project Symposium, leaving space for upcoming developments. May will be a busy month! 

This week was a simple, albeit exasperating week. I still haven’t committed to a college yet and that is weighing heavily on my mind 🤠. This week, I remodeled the planet for the cloudy condition but simulated it with its own star, no longer our sun (womp womp 🌞). Typically, a cloudy simulation with 18 phases would take about 6 hours; however, this time, the simulation with only 6 phases took about 9 hours… (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`) which was not very nice. Results are worth it though, displayed below.

Now, this project can take a couple different routes. 

1. Create more General Circulation Models (GCMs) from different data sources that come from different instruments. The Trappist Habitability Atmospheric Intercomparison (THAI) project, where I was able to find the data, compares four models: ExoCAM, LMD-Generic, ROCKE-3D and the UM. Currently, I use the ROCKE-3D model, which is specially adapted for non-modern-Earth simulations. Next, I’d opt to use ExoCam, which supports a greater range of parameters than ROCKE-3D.
2. Model a different case! Trappist-1e is a transiting planet**, which means that we observe from Earth the planet passes in front of its host star, blocking some light. I could potentially find a different planet that is non-transiting, which seems to be all the rage these days.

Lastly, I’ve been thinking about different ways to display and model the planet. I could try to 3D model and print it, but I’m worried that I have too little experience with 3D printing to be able to model it in time. I could also try papier-mache, but I am unsure how accurate the model would turn out. Let me know if you have any suggestions! Greatly appreciated:)

**Just wanted to point out “Longitude: 2” and “Longitude: 182” on the images. These phases bypass the transit cases 0 degrees (behind the star) and 180 degrees (in front of the star). Also, since the planet is tidally locked, the permanent night side is illuminated for your viewing purposes.

If you’re struggling to fall asleep, count aliens 🧛‍♂️.

Tanvi