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Fig. 11

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Predictions from Mie theory for the reflectance properties of several refractory species assuming spherical, monodisperse particles observed in the Kepler bandpass as a function of particle radius (Kitzmann & Heng 2018, curves above), for comparison with the posterior distributions for the reflectance parameters from Kepler observations (histograms). The measured single scattering albedos ω of each planet (also shown in Fig. 14) have 0.7 ≲ ω ≲ 1, placing a lower limit on the particle radius r ≳ 0.01 µm. The phase curves are consistent with scattering asymmetry parameters g < 0.2, though posterior distributions are so narrow as a result of the prior distribution. Fits consistent with near-zero g correspond to upper limits on particle radii of r ≲ 0.1 µm. The three species consistent with the phase curve observations for Kepler-7 b and Kepler-41 b are CaTiO3 (perovskite), Mg2SiO4 (forsterite), and MgSiO3 (enstatite), given that they have ω > 0.9 and near-zero g. We compare the condensation temperatures of each of these species with the local temperatures at the longitudes of the less reflective region in Fig. 12.

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