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 gang about balancing these distinct roles,
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 pleasure of collaborating with Exocast’s own Hannah
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 likely
The Exocast team are back and this time joined by the esteemed Nikole Lewis, Professor and Deputy director of the Carl Sagan institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA. We chat all things career, JWST, the future of exoplanet characterisation with the Roman Space Telescope and Nikole add her favourite Neptune mass exoplanet GJ 436b to the Exocast Adopted Planets archive.
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 beautiful spectra from JWST appear to show hints of water vapour, but
In this episode the team cover some of the latest exoplanet news stories. This month Hannah summarises the most recent exoplanetary science coming out of JWST’s early release science programs; Andrew tells us a bit about the habitability of Enceladus’s subsurface ocean, and Hugh talks about a new observation of compositional differences for planets around M-dwarfs.
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.
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
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 gang chat with Dr Mark McCaughrean, who is a Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Science Working Group Interdisciplinary Scientist, about the recent launch, deployment and commissioning of JWST. Mark shares scientific and personal highlights of his long involvement with the telescope, his experience of JWST’s launch from French Guiana on Christmas Day 2021, and
Exocast-27b: special guest Michael Gully-Santiago, K2, Exoplanet meetings, news, HAT-P-11b
In the 26th episode of Exocast: Natasha Batalha joins Hannah for a chat about PandExo (the Exoplanet ETC for HST and JWST) and her work on Martian climate modelling. Hugh discusses all things radial velocity: history, current, and future prospects. Andrew covers all of June’s exoplanet news; And Natasha adds “Hannah’s special planet” HAT-P-26b to our gang of Adopted Planets http://media.blubrry.com/exocast/www.exocast.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Exocast-26b_v2.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS
In the 18th episode of Exocast, we chat to Sasha Hinkley, a direct imaging expert at the University of Exeter: “Spotlights & fireflies” – what it means to be able to directly image planets and how we do it. Why direct imaging may not have the numbers compared to other detection techniques, but can give us so much more information on each planet The future of direct imaging instruments, including JWST, WFIRST and the E-ELT.
Exocast-17b: origins of life part 1, global circulation models, news, GJ 667Cc
Exocast-16b: ELTs, JWST, news, 51 Eri b, newly minted Dr Osborn
Exocast-2b In the second exocast episode: • Andrew looks to future world-finding missions. • Hugh latches onto a planet spinning backwards, and adds another bizarre world (or what’s left of it anyway) to our adopted family to keep Kepler-10 b company. • Hannah covers all news exoplanetary from the last month, and there was quite a lot of it! http://media.blubrry.com/exocast/www.exocast.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/exocast-2b_v2.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS