Influences of Star Metallicity and Exoplanet Temperature on Atmospheric Composition

Overview

The question for this research was, “Does the metallicity of the type of star an exoplanet orbits or the exoplanet’s temperature influence the gaseous composition of its atmosphere?”. It was hypothesized that medium to high correlations would be shown by the abundance of gases when compared to the exoplanets’ temperatures or the star metallicities by using the Pearson correlation coefficient. First, the NASA Exoplanet Archive’s Atmospheric Spectroscopy table was filtered to randomly pick 15 exoplanets each for four star type groups: F, G, K, and M stars. The information for each exoplanet was inserted in a table on Microsoft Excel, and then the NASA Planetary Spectrum Generator was used to determine the abundances of the 10 most abundant gases in the exoplanets’ atmospheres. The data was added to the original table, which was then condensed into “tidy table form”. The gas types were filtered into individual tables and the Pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the probability of relationships between the abundances of each gas and the metallicities or temperatures. The strongest relationships measured for metallicity were medium relationships between 0.3 to 0.5. There were five medium relationships: HCl, HCN, HF, K, and Na. For temperature, 11 medium to very high correlations were shown, and there were six low or null correlations. The null hypothesis for metallicity was supported while the alternative hypothesis for temperature was supported. Uncertainties will be considered in the future, and the next variable to be explored will be insulation flux.

Competition history

• AJAS 2026 Category not listed

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