VSTAR Project
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Versatile Software for
Transfer
of Atmospheric
Radiation
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About VSTAR
VSTAR is an
atmospheric
radiative transfer code developed by Jeremy Bailey at the
University of
New South Wales. VSTAR can be used to predict the spectra
of solar
system planets, exoplanets, brown dwarfs and cool stars.
Features
of
VSTAR
- Line-by-line approach to molecular absorption using a molecular line database that
currently
contains more than 1.6 billion spectral lines.
- Ionization and Chemical Equilibrium model (ICE) to
predict
chemical equlibrium composition, including gas phase
chemistry,
ionized species and the formation of liquid and solid
condensates.
- Comprehensive treatment of scattering by molecules,
clouds
and aerosols, using Mie scattering, T-matrix and other
methods.
- Full multiple scattering treatment of radiative transfer
using discrete-ordinate and other methods.
- Includes vector radiative transfer options (full
polarization, 3 or 4 Stokes parameters).
- Prediction of transmission, radiance, flux, polarization
and
exoplanet
transit spectra at high spectral resolution.
History
of
VSTAR
Development of VSTAR began in
2002,
initially to support our observations of the solar system
planets Mars
and Venus. A paper describing an early version of VSTAR was
presented
at the Granada Mars Atmosphere Workshop in 2006. VSTAR was
substantially updated during 2009/2010 to extend its
applicability to
exoplanets, brown dwarfs and cool stars. Polarization
capability was
added in 2011.
Publications
The current version of VSTAR is described in the following
paper:
Bailey, J., Kedziora-Chudczer, L., 2012, "Modelling the
Spectra
of Planets, Brown Dwarfs and Stars using VSTAR",
MNRAS, 419, 1913-1929 (ADS).
Other
Publications
using VSTAR
Chamberlain, S., Bailey, J., Crisp, D., Meadows, V.S., 2013,
"Ground-based near-infrared observations of water vapour
in the Venus troposphere", Icarus, in press, (astro-ph).
Bailey, J., 2012, "Methane and Deuterium in Titan's
Atmosphere", Proceedings 11th Australian Space
Science Conference, 55-64 (pdf)
Cotton, D.V., Bailey, J., 2012, "Carbon Monoxide Above
and Below Venus' Clouds", Proceedings 11th
Australian Space Science Conference, 65-74 (pdf)
Cotton, D.V., Bailey, J., Crisp, D., Meadows, V.S., 2012, "The
Distribution of Carbon Monoxide in the Lower Atmosphere of
Venus", Icarus, 217, 570-584 (astro-ph) (ADS)
Chamberlain, S., Bailey, J., 2012, "Water Vapour
Abundance and Distribution in the Lower Venusian Atmosphere",
Geophys. Res. Abstracts, 14, EGU2012-3098 (ADS).
Bailey, J., Ahlsved, L., Meadows, V.S., 2011, "The Near-IR
Spectrum of
Titan Modeled with an Improved Methane Line List",
Icarus, 213,
218-232 (astro-ph) (ADS).
Kedziora-Chudczer, L., Bailey, J., 2011, "Modelling the
near-IR
spectra of Jupiter using line-by-line methods", Mon. Not.
Roy.
Astr. Soc., in press (astro-ph).
Bailey, J., 2009, "A
Comparison
of
Water
Vapor Line Parameters for Modeling the Venus Deep Atmosphere",
Icarus,
201, 444-453 (astro-ph)
(ADS)
Cotton, D.V. and Bailey, J.A., 2009. "Mapping the
Distribution of Carbon Monoxide in the Lower Venusian Atmosphere
–
Preliminary Results", Proceedings 8th Australian Space
Science
Conference. (pdf)
Bailey, J., Meadows, V.S., Chamberlain, S., Crisp, D., 2008. "The temperature
of the
Venus mesosphere from O2 (a1Dg) airglow observations",
Icarus,
197,
247-259
(ADS).
Bailey, J., Simpson, A. and Crisp, D., 2007, "Correcting
Infrared
Spectra for Atmospheric Transmission", Publ. Astr. Soc.
Pacific,
119, 228-236 (ADS)
Hough, J.H., Lucas, P.W., Bailey, J.A., Tamura, M., Hirst,
E.,
Harrison, D. and Bartholomew-Biggs, M., 2006, "PlanetPol: A Very
High
Sensitivity Polarimeter", Publ. Astr. Soc. Pacific, 118,
1302-1318 (ADS).
Bailey, J., 2006, "VSTAR - a new
high-spectral-resolution atmospheric radiative transfer code for
Mars
and other planets", Second workshop on Mars atmosphere
modelling
and observations, Feb 27-Mar 3 2006, Granada, Spain, Edited by F.
Forget, M.A. Lopez-Valverde, M.C. Desjean, J.P. Huot, F. Lefevre,
S.
Lebonnois, S.R. Lewis, E. Millour, P.L. Read and R.J. Wilson,
Publisher: LMD, IAA, AOPP, CNES, ESA, p148 (pdf)
Jeremy Bailey 26/12/2012