With Pandora swiftly moving closer to launch, Mission Operation Center lead Karl Harshman and I (as Uof A PI, and Lead of the Pandora Exoplanets Science Working Group) spoke with KOLD13 news about the mission’s science goals.
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We have a ride to space!
NASA selected SpaceX as launch provider for our Pandora Exoplanet Space Telescope. Pandora will look at 20 particularly exciting exoplanets and their host stars. The University of Arizona will provide Mission Operations and I lead the Pandora Exoplanets Working Group. Look out for more news as we approach T-0! Visit the Pandora Mission site to…
Joining The Explorers Club!
The Explorers Club is a famed group of explorers who have led scientific expeditions all over our planet – and beyond – for over a century. I recall reading – as a teenager – inspiring stories in the National Geographic about expeditions conducted by The Explorers Club. Given the long-standing excellence of TEC in scientific expeditions and advancing human…
Pointing to the Poles of Brown Dwarfs: Polar Vortex Possibilities
The AAS Nova featured a nice article by Lexi Gault on our new paper in which Fuda Nguyen and I propose that the polar regions of brown dwarfs (and most gas giant exoplanets) are different from the equatorial and mid-latitude regions: The poles are in a different circulation regime (vortex-dominated) – this means that they have different…
AAAS Fellowship Ceremony in D.C.
Just completed a wonderful trip to D.C. to the AAAS Fellows Forum and a visit to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I was honored to be elected a AAAS Fellow and enjoyed participating in the Fellows Forum, celebrating the new Fellows at the 150th Anniversary of the program. It was thrilling to share this honor…
Chasing Storms with TESS: High-speed Winds and Jet Stream Systems in the Closest Brown Dwarfs
Our exciting new results on TESS observations of the atmospheric dynamics of the closest brown dwarfs are out! Here is a link to the Astrophysical Journal paper that describes the findings. Thanks to Mimmo Nardiello’s mastery of the TESS data, we could present an amazing rich lightcurve on the closest brown dwarf system to the…
Nautilus at ASCEND2020!
The American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics‘ ASCEND2020 event was an exciting amalgam of governmental groups, entrepreneurs, academia, aerospace corporations, and everyone interested in Space 2.0 and the new economic opportunities it may bring along. With over 3,000 attendees from 32 countries and 1,300 organizations, it has been a fascinating event to attend. I was…
Alien Earths Team Selected for major new NASA Astrobiology Award!
A few days ago we got a very exciting news: Our Alien Earths team was selected by NASA for a major award within its ICAR (Interdisciplinary Consortium for Astrobiology Research) program! The $6M funding awarded to our Alien Earths team will enable a very exciting and cutting-edge portfolio of research projects for the next five…
NASA’s TESS spacecraft is finding hundreds of exoplanets – and is poised to find thousands more
Read our article for The Conversation on TESS’s exoplanet bounty and the importance of finding planets in the Solar neighborhood!
Exoplanets: Headlines from the Future
The field of exoplanet is exploding: on a typical day about a dozen new peer-reviewed exoplanet studies are published and most weeks see announcements of multiple discoveries: new results range from the compositions and structures of exoplanet atmospheres through new findings on exoplanet formation and exoplanet population to exciting discoveries of the smallest, coolest, or lowest-mass…