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 Exocast merchandise
In this episode the team cover some of the latest exoplanet news stories. This month Hugh covers the first JWST’s transmission spectrum of a small planet, validating and characterising the exoplanet LHS 475b. Hannah discusses some preliminary work from JWST, including phase curves from WASP-121b and WASP-43b, that reveal the capabilities and quirks of the instruments onboard. Andrew breaks the rules by discussing three papers, 2 of which are closely connected, on the general topic
Back on the airwaves after a short hiatus, the Exocast team are delighted to be joined by Georgina (George) Dransfield, a PhD student at the University of Birmingham in the UK, who works on finding new exoplanets using the transit method. George uses data from ground-based surveys like SPECULOOS and space-based surveys like TESS and is also is somewhat unique in observing from Antarctica, specifically using and helping to run the ASTEP pipeline. Of course, George
This month Hannah, Andrew, and Hugh are joined in the virtual Exocast studio by planetary scientist Dr Naomi Rowe-Gurney. Naomi is a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Howard University in the USA where she works on all things Ice Giants (Uranus and Neptune) in particular looking at them with JWST. The perfectly timed episode follows on from newly released images of Neptune taken with JWST that Naomi had been working on and we discuss the future of Ice Giant science with JWST and a mission to Uranus. After a health giggle session over an excessive use of the word “Uranus” we dive into the science of what a mission to the planet could help us reveal and what makes the Ice Giants so unique.
Hugh, Hannah & Andrew turn their attention to a simple question with a very complicated answer: our favourite! This month we are pondering how planets form. What do we know about planet formation from the Earth, observations from our Solar System, and of distant exoplanetary systems? Where are the gaps in our understanding of the processes involved? Do the theories and models of planet formation hold up to observational scrutiny? We might not be able
The latest news hot off the Exocast news desk for July/August 2022, another exciting month for exoplanet science: Andrew takes some time to discuss the life and influence of Dr James Lovelock, the co-originator the Gaia Hypothesis, who died recently. His news this month takes the form of two independent but neatly connected papers on the topic of ‘chirality’: ‘The Chiral Puzzle of Life’ by Globus and Blandford, and ‘Directional Aspects of Vegetation Linear and
This month Hannah, Andrew & Hugh are joined by NASA Goddard’s space telescope expert, Dr. Knicole Colón. Fresh from her NASA TV appearance unveiling JWST’s first exoplanet spectrum to the world, the JWST Deputy Project Scientist for Exoplanet Science gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the big day, as well as how the team got JWST ready for science. She also discusses the ongoing TESS mission searching for new planets, as well as the Pandora
The latest news hot off the Exocast news desk for June/July 2022, a very exciting month for exoplanet science: Hannah gives us a run-down of some of the long-awaited first images from JWST, including a spectrum from the atmosphere of WASP-96b from the NIRISS instrument showing clear water features. The team try (and fail) to contain their giddiness at the prospect of entering a new era of exoplanet astrophysics. Andrew takes to the theory literature
The latest exoplanet news hot off the Exocast news desk: Hannah gives us a run-down of the Exoplanets IV conference held recently in Las Vegas, at which both her and Hugh were in attendence, including summaries of interesting sessions and presentations. Hugh presents a great new paper from Panahi et al. 2022 entitled “The Detection of Transiting Exoplanets by Gaia” that demonstates the Gaia spacecraft’s ability to contribute to exoplanet detection. Andrew keeps things in
In this episode of Exocast the team are fortunate to be joined in the virtual studio by Dr Jennifer Burt, NASA/JPL’s Extreme Precision Radial Velocity Investigation Scientist, for an extreme discussion of the radial velocity technique for finding and characterising exoplanets. Jenn gives us a comprehensive and enthusiastic rundown of the method, US and European RV surveys, supporting current and future photometric missions with RV follow-up, and an update on new technology and instruments that
This month Hugh, Hannah, and Andrew go back to basics to discuss the diversity and complexity inherent in the study of planetary atmospheres. Exocast-59b touches on how we define an atmosphere and takes a sojourn through the varied and beautiful atmospheres of the Solar System, as well as a journey back through time to consider the long evolution of the atmosphere of our planet. How does an atmosphere form and change over time, cling to
In this months News episode Hugh, Hannah, and Andrew each discuss a paper from the past month of the latest exoplanet research including, JWST test data analysis, Oxidative Earth, and multi-star systems.
In this episode the Exocast team talk with Dr Megan (Meg) Schwamb about her work from the solar system to distant exoplanets and citizen science. The show is jam packed with exciting science and enough ice cream analogies to build an Exocast Parlour. We discuss in detail the process of going from a strange looking light curve posted in PlanetHunters Kepler to publication and bonafide planet, how you can track ice formation at Mars’ poles, and take a look to the farthest reaches of our solar system to ask what is out there and what does that mean for our planets formation history. Meg also inducts PH-1b into the Exocast Adopted Planets family.
In this episode the Exocast crew are excited to talk with expert science communicator, JAXA space scientist, and master of computer simulations, Professor Elizabeth Tasker. During the hour long discussion we talk about how Elizabeth transitioned into planetary research from a degree and PhD in galactic simulations, the journey from the UK to the US, Canada and now in Japan. Where the idea for her popular science book The Planet Factory came from and why
In this episode the Exocast gang are joined by veteran exoplaneteer Dr Mark Marley from NASA Ames. During a nearly hour-long discussion, we probe Mark’s experience of early exoplanet discovery and characterisation efforts in the 1990s, his work on clouds and atmospheric circulation models, ‘ice’ giants, brown dwarfs, his leadership role with the LUVOIR space telescope concept, as well as his cheerleading efforts during the Exocup.
In this month’s news rundown Hugh, Hannah, and Andrew provide a summary of three interesting papers that appeared on their radar during February/March 2021: Hugh takes a look at The Chemical link between stars and their rocky planets by Vardan Adibekyan and others. Andrew summarises Lithologic Controls on Silicate Weathering Regimes of Temperate Planets by Kaustubh Hakim and team. Hannah dons a thermal raincoat to cover Water on hot rocky exoplanets by Edwin Kite and Laura
This month Hugh, Andrew, and Hannah talk to astrophysicist, folklorist, and science communicator Moiya McTier. Moiya is an NSF graduate researcher at Columbia University in New York City and works to understand exoplanets from a galactic perspective. The Exocast team talks to Moiya about work from measuring the topography on an exoplanet by the effect that mountains and other features have in transit, all the way up to how the stars in the Milky Way
In the final of three mini-exocasts we will release this month, we cover some of the notable happenings in exoplanet science over the past month. On this episode we cover new planets from the TESS mission, a novel technique for detecting exoplanets using radio emission, and the end of the very productive KELT survey after 17 years. We also revisit K2-18b, which hit the exoplanet headlines last year after water vapour was definitively detected in
Our final bite-size episode for this month features Andrew, Hannah, and Hugh chatting with Dr Stephen Kane, Associate Professor of Planetary Astrophysics in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside. Stephen tells us a little about his need to use all exoplanet detection techniques, his love for our hot and cloudy next-door neighbour Venus, and he tries to sneak two planets into our adopted exoplanet list, before settling on one
Hugh chats with his colleague at the University of Bern Dr. Brett Morris about starspots and their effect on exoplanet detection and characterisation, his experience with an astrobiology mission right here on Earth, and he recounts an exciting day in Bern earlier this year. Andrew discusses the labels we apply to the worlds we find, and the gang debates the usefulness of the terms for exoplanet science. And Hannah reads ADS so you don’t have