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Understanding Atmospheres Across The Stellar-Substellar Boundary, Eileen C. Gonzales
Understanding Atmospheres Across The Stellar-Substellar Boundary, Eileen C. Gonzales
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Complexities in the atmospheres of sources that straddle the boundary between low-mass stars and planets drive the spectral features we observe and the fundamental parameters that we derive. In an effort to understand the underlying cause of these spectral features, this work examines low-mass stars and brown dwarfs using two approaches: distance-calibrated spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and atmospheric retrievals. SEDs allow for the determination of semi-empirical fundamental parameters, while atmospheric retrievals allow us to derive the atmospheric structure and composition, as well as extrapolated fundamental parameters for a source. Low-metallicity and high surface gravity sources, known as subdwarfs, are the …