ONLINE: Astronomy Talk: Meeting our Nearest Planetary Neighbors -- and a Glimpse

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Come join us for our monthly Astronomy talk!

Topic: Meeting our Nearest Planetary Neighbors -- and a Glimpse of the Solar System's Ultimate Fate -- with NASA's TESS Mission

Speaker: Dr. Andrew Vanderburg

Abstract: The past three decades of observational astronomy have led to the discovery of the first known exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Since the first exoplanets were found in the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of additional discoveries have shown us that planets are ubiquitous in the Milky Way and even outnumber stars in our galaxy. Now, that we know these planets exist, our challenge is to probe their detailed properties and answer questions like "What are these planets like?", "Are these worlds similar to the ones in our Solar System, or different from anything we know?", and "Could any of these planets host life?". As a first step in this direction, we have launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission into Earth orbit. TESS's goal is to conduct a census of our closest planetary neighbors and identify the best planets to study in detail to answer these questions. I will review the TESS mission, show some of its early results, and highlight a particularly interesting discovery that shows the possible future of our own solar system.

Bio:

Andrew is originally from Austin, Texas. He received his BA in Physics and Astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2013 and his PhD in Astronomy from Harvard University in 2017. Afterwards, Andrew moved to the University of Texas at Austin with a NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellowship. In 2020, Andrew joined the faculty in Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before moving to MIT in July 2021.

Andrew's research focuses on studying exoplanets, or planets which orbit stars other than the Sun. Andrew is interested in developing cutting-edge techniques and methods to discover new planets outside of our solar system, and studying the planets we find to learn their detailed properties.

In recent years, astronomers have found that planets the size of Earth are common in our galaxy, but little is known about their characteristics. Are these planets mostly rocky like the Earth, or do they have thick gaseous atmospheres like Uranus and Neptune? From which elements and materials are these planets built, and are their geologies similar to our own planet’s?

Andrew and his team tackle these problems by conducting astronomical observations using facilities on Earth like the Magellan Telescopes in Chile as well as space-based observatories like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope. Once the data from these telescopes are in hand, Andrew’s team specializes in developing new analysis methods that help extract as much scientific value as possible. Currently, Andrew’s group is exploring the use of machine learning — especially deep neural networks — in exoplanet detection to both increase the sensitivity and efficiency of planet searches. Eventually, through this work, Andrew hopes to help answer questions like *“Are the planets orbiting other stars throughout the galaxy anything like the worlds in our Solar system?”*and “Could any of these planets be hospitable to life like the Earth?”.