24 March: Elsie Lee

Speaker: Elsie Lee (University of Bern)

Date: Tuesday 24 March 2026

Time: 15:00

Location: Physics 3.21

Heart of Glass - Exploring silicate clouds in exosolar atmospheres from lab to theory

Clouds are an integral part of any planetary atmosphere, playing a critical role in regulating the global climate and day-to-day weather. In this talk I will provide an overview of the history behind the discovery, modelling and understanding of exoplanet and brown dwarf clouds, moving into contemporary JWST efforts to characterise their properties, from size to composition to spatial structures, as well as the current challenges present in the field on this topic. I will first present recent results from my group utilising large scale general circulation (GCM) simulations of exosolar world to try better understand the connections between cloud formation and chemical processes in the atmospheres.  I will touch on ongoing efforts to develop more sophisticated models of cloud formation microphysics, which has been spurred by recent discoveries from JWST programs. Lastly, I will present preliminary results from my collaboration with the Sossi lab at ETHZ, using their laser-heated levitation furnace to produce exoplanet cloud analogues in the lab and measuring their optical properties.