Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-19-2026
Department
Physics and Astronomy
Keywords
exoplanet atmospheres, atmospheric clouds, brown dwarfs
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 & 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 SiO2 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.
Source Publication Title
The Astronomical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Volume
171
Issue
2
First Page
98
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae29e5
Recommended Citation
Batalha, N. E., Rooney, C. M., Visscher, C., Moran, S. E., Marley, M. S., Sengupta, A. R., Kiefer, S., Lodge, M. G., Mang, J., Morley, C. V., Mukherjee, S., Fortney, J. J., Gao, P., Lewis, N. K., Mayorga, L. C., Pearce, L. A., & Wakeford, H. R. (2026). Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with Virga. The Astronomical Journal, 171 (2), 98. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae29e5
Comments
Published in The Astronomical Journal
Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with Virga