→ Widely unknown Exoplanet Astronomer

Credit: NASA

The Exoplanet group lead by Dr. David Sing at the University of Exeter has been awarded nearly 200 hours of telescope time at the Hubble Space Telescope. As a PhD student of his this means a busy time ahead of me.  The awarded telescope time will be used to study the atmospheres of Exoplanets.

Dr. David Sing:

“This is one of the biggest exoplanet research programmes ever using the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a major coup for the University of Exeter to have secured such a significant amount of time on the world’s best telescope”.

“Astronomers have now detected hundreds of exoplanets and we now know that some of these planets have extreme environments, unlike anything in our own solar system. Everything we have discovered so far about these planets has been puzzling so I am expecting the unexpected.”

Further reading: BBC News, University of Exeter and University of Arizona

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWSP) is a large space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2014. It has frequently been referred to as the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope. One major difference to be aware of between this space telescope and Hubble is that the James Webb Space Telescope will be observing mainly at infrared wavelengths. The JWST will amongst other things study the first galaxies formed, peer through dusty clouds to view stars forming planetary systems and survey the distant universe at IR-wavelengths, but what exactly is it expected to do for exoplanet research?

The James Webb Space Telescope

According to the NASA JWST website:

” The James Webb Space Telescope will study the physical and chemical properties of solar systems (including our own) and where the building blocks of life may be present. “

After doing some research on the web I found that the James Webb Space Telescope  is expected to be able to:

• Image / characterize planets with a wide range of masses and separations
• Identify atmospheric gasses not yet discovered such as water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane (using the transit method) in Hot Jupiters (and possibly characterize the atmospheres of Super Earths).
• Detect planet features by studying only a single transit event
• Detect thermal emission from super-Earths in the habitable zone which transit M stars by studing a few transits