Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with <tt>Virga</tt>

Abstract Here we present an open-source cloud model for substellar atmospheres, called Virga . The Virga-v0 series has already been widely adopted in the literature. It is written in Python and has heritage from the A. S. Ackerman &amp; M. S. Marley model (often referred to as eddysed ), used to study clouds on both exoplanets and brown dwarfs. In the development of the official Virga-v1 we have retained all the original functionality of eddysed and updated/expanded several components, including the back-end optical constant data, calculations of the Mie properties, available condensate species, saturation vapor pressure curves, and formalism for fall speed calculations. Here we benchmark Virga by reproducing key results in the literature, including the SiO 2 cloud detection in WASP-17 b and the brown dwarf Sonora Diamondback model series. Development of Virga is ongoing, with future versions already planned and ready for release. We encourage community feedback and collaborations within the GitHub code repository.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
The Astronomical Journal
Published
2026-01-19
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae29e5
Citations
3
Primary Topic
Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
71.48
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article

Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with <tt>Virga</tt>

M. Marley, Channon Visscher, James L Mang, Sven Kiefer et al.
3 citations
The Astronomical Journal
Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
71.48
article

Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with <tt>Virga</tt>

M. Marley, Channon Visscher, James L Mang, Sven Kiefer, Gao Peter, Logan Pearce, Caoimhe M. Rooney, Aditya R. Sengupta, Natasha E. Batalha, Nikole K. Lewis, Caroline V. Morley, L. C. Mayorga, Jonathan J. Fortney, Sagnick Mukherjee, Hannah R. Wakeford, Sarah E. Moran
article en
3 citations

Abstract

Abstract Here we present an open-source cloud model for substellar atmospheres, called Virga . The Virga-v0 series has already been widely adopted in the literature. It is written in Python and has heritage from the A. S. Ackerman &amp; M. S. Marley model (often referred to as eddysed ), used to study clouds on both exoplanets and brown dwarfs. In the development of the official Virga-v1 we have retained all the original functionality of eddysed and updated/expanded several components, including the back-end optical constant data, calculations of the Mie properties, available condensate species, saturation vapor pressure curves, and formalism for fall speed calculations. Here we benchmark Virga by reproducing key results in the literature, including the SiO 2 cloud detection in WASP-17 b and the brown dwarf Sonora Diamondback model series. Development of Virga is ongoing, with future versions already planned and ready for release. We encourage community feedback and collaborations within the GitHub code repository.

The Astronomical JournalVol. 171(2)
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
71.48
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