This project will be devoted to the continuing development of the molecular spectroscopic line lists that will aid current and future studies of planetary atmospheres. Spectroscopic parameters for…

This federal contract award, with ID NNX16AG51G, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), a division of the Smithsonian Institution. The $472,223.72 grant is funding the continuing development of the Molecular Spectroscopic Line Lists, which will aid current and future studies of planetary atmospheres. This supports the HITRAN database, a U.S. national treasure maintained by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The project aims to expand the spectroscopic parameters in HITRAN to better study planetary atmospheres, including those of extrasolar planets. This work is part of NASA's Aura program and does not have a set-aside designation. The Smithsonian Institution, as a trust instrumentality of the United States, is a leading provider of scientific research, instrumentation, and data system services to federal agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation.

This project will be devoted to the continuing development of the molecular spectroscopic line lists that will aid current and future studies of planetary atmospheres. Spectroscopic parameters for studies of the terrestrial atmosphere have been compiled for many years in the hitran database which is being maintained and constantly updated at the harvard smithsonian center for astrophysics.the hitran database is considered a US national treasure and is one of the most cited references in the geosciences. While this database has been successfully used by different remote-sensing missions of the terrestrial atmosphere, the extent of parameters contained in hitran is lacking completion in a majority of cases to study planetary atmospheres. The funding from the NASA aura program does not imply support of astrophysically important parameters, including parameters for the species that are not present in the earth atmosphere in detectable amounts. Nevertheless, high resolution spectroscopic parameters are extremely important when interpreting planetary spectra recorded with spectrometers located on the ground and, more importantly, on board numerous current and future space missions including spitzer, hubble, cassini, venus express, james webb space telescope and many others. Ccurate reference data are required for determination of atmospheric structure and composition, including those of extrasolar planets, searches for trace constituents representative of complex interactions between the planetary surface and the atmosphere, the interior of the deep and upper atmosphere, and seasonal activity. At the present time, the astrophysics community has had to rely on the scattered information in the literature which is available in a great variety of units, formalisms and formats while some cover only very limited spectral ranges. In addition, these data do not have the advantage of having gone through a validation and filtering process such as exists for hitran.