Title: Let The Great World Spin: Revealing the Turbulent, Stormy Atmospheres of Giant Planet Analogs
Abstract: Brown dwarfs act as powerful analogs to the directly-imaged exoplanets, with similar temperatures, masses and compositions. Photometric variability monitoring of brown dwarfs is a unique probe of their atmospheres, as it is sensitive to condensate clouds as they rotate in and out of view. Variability has now been robustly observed in a range of L, T and Y spectral type brown dwarfs and more recently in planetary-mass companions and free-floating exoplanet analogs. In this talk, I will discuss some of the key takeaways from our recent variability studies of brown dwarfs, as well as prospects for extending this work to directly-imaged exoplanets in the future. In particular, I will discuss the effects of surface gravity and viewing angle on observed variability properties, as well as a novel technique to measure brown dwarf and exoplanet wind speed.