Alex Lockwood (Caltech) - Near-IR Direct Detection of Water Vapor on Tau Bootis b

In this talk I will present a new technique for the direct detection of exoplanets using their atmospheric signatures. By applying the same techniques used for spectroscopic binary stars to hot Jupiters, we can uniquely solve the orbital properties of the system as well as gather atmospheric information. I will present a detection of water vapor on the nearby planet Tau Boo b, one of the first of several targets that have been recently observed by our group using the NIRSPEC instrument on the Keck telescopes.