Characterizing Exoplanet in the Era of the Spitzer Space Telescope

Spitzer was a powerful tool for a wide range of exoplanet science. It enabled a deluge of scientific contributions to the study of other worlds, from probing the atmospheres of short-period planets to discovering long-period exoplanets via gravitational microlensing. In this talk, I will present our easy-to-use, automated, customizable Spitzer Phase Curve Analysis (SPCA) open-source pipeline and provide highlights of what we have discovered about the atmospheres of hot Jupiters, including the first westward hotspot phase curve offset and evidence for ubiquitous nightside clouds in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters. Along the way, I will discuss how we have adapted the data reduction and detrending approaches of short-period planets to the Spitzer Microlensing Campaign. These data analysis strategies and the associated scientific lines of inquiry will become even more important in the era of JWST and WFIRST.