exocast

For this episode the Exocast team are joined by Dr Matthew Kenworthy from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Matt’s work focuses on strange transit events and the search for new ways to better process data. Matt started his career in the instrumentation lab and we dive into that transition to more remote hands-off research. We talk about his work with the assassin, sorry ASASSN, network and the search for weird dips,...

We sat around our virtual studio to chat with Queensland-based astronomer Jonti Horner, who works on planetary dynamics – both within our own solar system, and around others. As well as discovering the impact of giant planet dynamics on habitable planets like earth, we also discussed the importance of aboriginal astronomy in Australia, his various media appearances, and Jonti’s namesake asteroid. Finally, Jonti adopts a spec...

Join the Exocast team as they chat with Dr Malena Rice an expert on planetary and exoplanetary dynamics through both theory and observation. Malena tells us about her journey into professional astronomy. Malena grew up and attended college in California before moving to the east coast for grad school in the Yale Department of Astronomy, only taking a quick one years’ break as 51 Peg fellow at MIT before returning to Yale as ...

This month the gang sit in with Dr Eamonn Kerins, expert in gravitational microlensing from the University of Manchester. He tells us how astronomers can find extremely distant exoplanets through the warping effect their mass has on light itself; and takes us through the past, present and future of one of the more obscure exoplanet detection methods. This includes how ESA’s Euclid mission could contribute to NASA’s Nancy Gra...

For this episode the Exocast team are joined by Dr Benjamin (Ben) Pope from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Ben has worked on everything from transit light curve modelling, to direct imaging instrumentation, to using tree rings to study solar activity and we try desperately to cover it all in the episode. Ben shares with us what excites him the most about the search for exoplanets and how instrumentation developments...

The Exocast team are joined on this episode by exoplanetary interior investigator Professor Caroline Dorn. Caroline started her career in Earth sciences and geophysics, studying for her PhD aquifer systems at the University of Lausanne, before switching her focus to the interiors of more distant worlds in 2013 with postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Bern and Zurich. As of April 2023, Caroline is an Assistant Profe...

The Exocast team are joined on this episode by Dr. Louise Nielsen, a Danish astronomer who, after a batchelor’s degree at Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, moved to the Geneva Observatory for a PhD focussing on radial velocity (RV) observations of exoplanets. Louise then completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, before joining the Ludwig-Maximili...

The Exocast team are joined on this show by Dr. Néstor Espinoza from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, USA. Néstor is an Assistant Astronomer and Mission Scientist for Hubble and JWST at STScI, where he focusses on transiting exoplanets and their stars. He also provides support for HST and JWST as Mission Scientist for Exoplanet Science in the Instrument Division, and Néstor speaks to the Exocast ga...

The Exocast team are joined on this show by Jules Fowler, a NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where they work to improve extreme adaptive optics technologies and seek the signatures of exoplanets in polarized light. Jules also shares insights gleaned from four years working as an analyst and science software engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), where they had the ...

The Exocast team return from a short hiatus to be joined on this show by Dr Jason Wang from Northwestern University in Illinois. Jason is a direct imager, and gives us a quick overview of how we are able to find and characterise planets through direct imaging, as well as discussing the Gemini Planet Imager, 51 Eridani b, KPIC, VLT’s Gravity, and the making of the well-known, jaw-dropping animation of the planetary system aro...

In this most excellent 100th episode of Exocast from the team we bring you the latest in exoplanet research and news.

Hannah and Andrew cover news from the TRAPPIST system. Hannah will dive into the JWST results that have come out about this very famous system of seven Earth-sized rocky planets. Two papers look to the mid-infrared to measure the light directly from the planets b and c in emission – finding that they like...

In this episode, Hannah, Hugh, and Andrew ask the question: Do all planets orbit stars? 

Even though the vast majority of planets found so far are bound to a star, there have been detections of planetary-mass objects floating alone through space. Are these planets? How do these objects form, and how can we detect them? Is it possible that these free-floating objects could be considered ‘habitable’? The exocast gang tackle...

Hugh, Hannah, & Andrew discuss a handful of interesting recent exoplanet papers from the past few months. We chat about the news coverage of K2-18b and the claims of biomarkers in that atmosphere, new discoveries, exciting atmospheres, and haze formation.

Hannah dives into the controversy of K2-18b and the announcement of DMS (a biomarker on Earth) detection amongst a methane dominated spectrum “Carbon-bearing Molecu...

This month the exocast team chat to exoplanetary astronomer Dr Maximillian Guenther. We talk about finding transiting exoplanets with TESS & NGTS, bright flares from M-dwarf stars, open-source transit modelling, chemical mixing experiments in zero-g aboard the vomit comet, connections between science and art, and his role as project scientist of the ESA CHEOPS mission. And, of course, hear which important and personally connected p...

In this episode Andrew, Hannah, and Hugh discuss the art and science of organising, and attending, scientific conferences, with a particular focus on the recent Exoclimes VI meeting held in Exeter, UK, organised by Hannah and others in the exoplanet community. These meetings are crucial for the dissemination and communication of new results among the community and further afield, but they can be daunting to attend, and very ...

Hugh, Hannah, & Andrew discuss a handful of interesting recent exoplanet papers from the past few months. We chat all things Exoclimes VI held in Exeter in June 2023, new discoveries, exciting atmospheres, and haze formation.

Hugh highlights a new discovery of “A temperate Earth-sized planet [LP 791-18 d] with tidal heating transiting an M6 star” by Peterson et al.

Hannah dives into an escaping atmosphere covering...

Hugh, Hannah, & Andrew discuss a handful of interesting recent exoplanet papers from the past few months.

Andrew delves into technosignatures and a study which looked at whether nearby extraterrestrial civilisations could detect our current levels of radio leakage, and exactly what they might be able to learn.

Hannah condenses the most recent JWST exoplanet paper, on the nearby transiting super-Earth GJ486b. The be...

In this episode Andrew, Hannah, and Hugh reflect on where their careers and research in exoplanet science have led over the past few years as a chance to (re)introduce ourselves to new and regular listeners alike! We hope you’ll appreciate a slightly different format for this show.

Do you have a question we didn’t ask? Join in the discussion in the comments below, and find us on Twitter. You can also get your hands on Exo...