Irwin, Professor Patrick

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Professor

Patrick Irwin

Professor of Planetary Physics and Tutorial Fellow

patrick.irwin@physics.ox.ac.uk

Websites 

 

Departmental website 

Personal research site 

 

Teaching 

Undergraduate: Currently 1st Year Maths, 2nd Year Electromagnetism and Optics

Graduate: DPhil Supervision

Academic background and research interests

Patrick Irwin is an academic in the sub-department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics, working on remote sensing of planetary atmospheres. He is, or has been, a co-investigator on the following space instruments: Cassini/CIRS, Venus Express/VIRTIS, Rosetta/VIRTIS and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter/MCS. In addition to spacecraft observations, he is also involved with ground-based observations of the giant planets and has taken a particular interest in monitoring the changes in Uranus’s cloud structure during and after its northern spring equinox in December 2007, studying the atmosphere of Neptune, and making ground-based observations of Jupiter in support of the NASA Juno mission. He recently made the first ever positive detection of hydrogen sulphide in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune. He is also, of late, becoming more involved in modelling the atmospheric spectra of exoplanets.

Publications:

Books:

Irwin, P.G.J., Giant planets of our solar system: Atmosphere, compositions and structure, Springer-Praxis, 2003.

Irwin, P.G.J., Detection methods and properties of known exoplanets, in Exoplanets (ed. J.W. Mason), Springer-Praxis, 2008.

Irwin, P.G.J., Giant planets of our solar system: Atmosphere, compositions and structure – 2nd Edition, Springer-Praxis, 2009.

Papers:

Patrick Irwin is the principal author or co-author on over 200 papers in the scientific literature. A selection of papers is listed below.

  1. Irwin, P.G.J., N.A. Teanby, R. de Kok, L.N. Fletcher, C.J.A. Howett, C.C.C. Tsang, C.F. Wilson, S.B. Calcutt, C.A. Nixon, P.D. Parrish (2008). The NEMESIS planetary atmosphere radiative transfer and retrieval tool, J. Quant. Spectrosc. and Rad. Trans., 109, 1136 – 1150. doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2007.11.006.
  1. Irwin, P. G. J., Barstow, J. K., Bowles, N. E., Fletcher, L. N., Aigrain, S., & Lee, J. -M. (2014). The transit spectra of Earth and Jupiter. Icarus, 242, 172-187. doi:1016/j.icarus.2014.08.005.
  2. Irwin, P. G. J., Wong, M. H., Simon, A. A., Orton, G. S., & Toledo, D. (2017). HST/WFC3 observations of Uranus’ 2014 storm clouds and comparison with VLT/SINFONI and IRTF/Spex observations. Icarus, 288, 99-119. doi:1016/j.icarus.2017.01.031
  3. Irwin, P. G. J., Toledo, D., Garland, R., Teanby, N. A., Fletcher, L. N., Orton, G. A., & Bézard, B. (2018). Detection of hydrogen sulfide above the clouds in Uranus’s atmosphere. Nature Astronomy, 2, 420-427. doi:1038/s41550-018-0432-1
  4. Irwin, P. G. J., Toledo, D., Garland, R., Teanby, N. A., Fletcher, L. N., Orton, G. A., & Bézard, B. (2019). Probably detection of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) above the clouds in Neptune’s atmosphere. Icarus, 321, 550-563. doi:1016/j.icarus.2018.12.014
  5. Irwin, P. G. J., Toledo, D., Braude, A., Bacon, R., Weilbacher, P.M., Teanby, N. A., Fletcher, L. N., & Orton, G. A. (2019). Latitudinal variation in the abundance of methane (CH4) above the clouds in Neptune’s atmosphere from VLT/MUSE Narrow Field Mode Observations. Icarus, 331, 69-82. doi: 1016/j.icarus.2019.05.011.